MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - My Favorite/Recommended Short Stories

Mario1up · 04-01-2011, 12:46 AM

You guys should check out Machine of Death. (http://machineofdeath.net/) It's a collection of short stories based on the premise that there's a machine that can take a sample of blood and tell someone how they would die. Here's a quick excerpt from the beginning of the book:

"The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does."

I've read the whole thing, all of the 30 or so short stories, and I must say they are excellent. They're interesting, well-written, and because each is by a different author, they all offer interesting pictures of how society would be and how people's lives would be changed by the presence of such a machine.

The best part? You can get it digitally for free! In fact, they encourage you to share the book however you like, copy it, distribute it, put it up in torrents, whatever.

Here is the free PDF download of the book. It actually looks great on a Kindle 3, as long as you turn the PDF setting to "darkest".

They also are recording podcasts of the short stories. They have only done eleven as of now, but they will be putting more up. http://machineofdeath.net/about/podcast

If you like, you can buy it in Kindle format at Amazon for $5.99, or in paper, or for Nook or iDevices.

04-01-2011, 12:46 AM	#57
Mario1up Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 374 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: Kindle 3/G	You guys should check out Machine of Death. (http://machineofdeath.net/) It's a collection of short stories based on the premise that there's a machine that can take a sample of blood and tell someone how they would die. Here's a quick excerpt from the beginning of the book: "The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die. The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does." I've read the whole thing, all of the 30 or so short stories, and I must say they are excellent. They're interesting, well-written, and because each is by a different author, they all offer interesting pictures of how society would be and how people's lives would be changed by the presence of such a machine. The best part? You can get it digitally for free! In fact, they encourage you to share the book however you like, copy it, distribute it, put it up in torrents, whatever. Here is the free PDF download of the book. It actually looks great on a Kindle 3, as long as you turn the PDF setting to "darkest". They also are recording podcasts of the short stories. They have only done eleven as of now, but they will be putting more up. http://machineofdeath.net/about/podcast If you like, you can buy it in Kindle format at Amazon for $5.99, or in paper, or for Nook or iDevices.