Thread: Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?
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Old 01-15-2018, 07:49 AM   #26797
Rev. Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib View Post
You're going to die! Yes, you!

And me!

And everyone in the world! DIE! DIE!

Why am I so excited, you might ask? Well.......

I just now purchased "The Immortalists," by Chloe Benjamin.

If you knew the day you would die, how would you live your life? This is the premise of Chloe Benjamin's novel, which is a literary novel.
The premise reminds me a bit of the two "Machine of Death" anthologies (Machine of Death and This Is How You Die), not to mention Heinlein's classic short, "Life-Line."

The short deals with the same innovation you describe - divining one's time of death in advance - but the anthologies deal with a device that tells you the means, and instead of getting something clear and actionable, you usually receive an opaque prophecy. Each of the stories in the anthologies gets its title from the death prediction, from the mysterious "?" and "Nothing" to some much more intricate ones. Naturally, the Machine is never wrong, which leads to all kinds of complications. (I believe the second collection has the story about the spec-ops squad made up of people with long-term death cards. They know their daring missions won't kill them...)

The creators of the Machine of Death books also made a card game based on it, where you play assassins who have to get really inventive with how they kill people...
Last edited by Rev. Bob; 01-15-2018 at 09:51 AM. Reason: Clarified last line.
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