Books you should have read already: Machine of Death

Machine of Death

edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo and David Malki

Short story collections are hard to review. Each story is different, each author has a different tone. With this collection there are some misses but so many of them are hits, and those hits are great.

The concept is that a machine has been made. You press a button and out pops a slip of paper that will tell you how you will die. The paper can be vague or misleading. The story can be about world building or a character study. And that’s it.

I don’t have a huge amount to say about this book, actually. Since it’s not a novel it doesn't convey an overall theme or thesis. Instead, it’s a loose enough concept that the stories don’t tread on each other. Each one covers different ground but are still tied together by the Machine. I used to read a lot of anthologies and sometimes even a collection of all good stories would feel like a failure. “Best Of”s can be completely unrelated stories so even if they’re good, one after another, there’s nothing connecting the whole thing together and starting the next story can break the pace of the reading experience. Other times the themes can be too tight and they feel contrived (time traveling wizard pets) and only one or two stories will feel fun, the rest feel like a writing exercise.

Machine of Death is not just a collection of good stories, it’s a good collection. There’s a balance between the concept and the freedom. This is something that other anthologies should aspire to.

And hell, you can get a PDF of it for free over here. You cheap bastards.