INTRODUCTION
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.
The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says BURIED ALIVE. The realization that these predictions seemed to revel in turnabout and surprise put a damper on things. It made the predictions more sinister –yes, if you were going to be buried alive you weren’t going to be electrocuted in the bathtub, but what if in skydiving you landed in a gravel pit? What if you were buried alive not in dirt but in something else? And would being caught in a collapsing building count as being buried alive? For every possibility the machine closed, it seemed to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility.
By that time, of course, the machine had been reverse engineered and duplicated, its internal workings being rather simple to construct, given our example. And yes, we found out that its predictions weren’t as straightforward as they seemed upon initial discovery at about the same time as everyone else did. We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time — too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.
- From Machine of Death:
A collection of stories about people who know how they will die
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The Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die origin story begins in an episode of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics just about five years ago, December 5, 2005 to be exact, reprinted here for reference:
Somewhere between then and now, Ryan North teamed up with Matthew Bennardo and David Malki ! (of Wondermark Productions, and yes, that is an “!” in his name), kicked the idea around and tossed out this (now long expired) call for entries explaining the project and asking for stories. They received and reviewed almost 700 submissions, and quietly toiled away on the book for years. Occasionally they would tease us with a bit, such as letting the story “Flaming Marshmallow” by Camille Alexa slip onto the Escape Pod science fiction podcast. Or they would update the infrequently-updated blog with news that each story was going to be accompanied with an illustration (many done by popular webcomic artists).
Finally, the news came in early August of this year that Machine of Death was finally going to be a self-published physical reality, debuting on October 26. And, wouldn’t it be a hoot if everyone purchased a copy of Machine of Death at Amazon.com on October 26, to try to boot it into the Amazon bestseller list for that day? Make it a MOD-Day!
Not only did Machine of Death leap into the Amazon bestseller list on 10/26, it held on to the overall #1 position in all books, crawling over Keith Richards, Gl3nn B3ck, and John Grisham and holding on to #1 for more than a day, an in the top ten for the rest of the week. This angered Gl3nn B3ck so much that he ranted about Machine of Death representing the “culture of death” we all live in, or something like that. (Read a roundup of the kerfluffle here.)
I’m proud to say that I purchased Machine of Death on MOD-Day, after having waiting for it since I first heard that story on Escape Pod, three years ago. Last night, I finished reading it.
It was an incredibly “thought-provoking” (what a detestable term) read, one that I had to spread out over a week, as it was also quite mentally overwhelming at times.
It is important to note that not all stories in Machine of Death actually end in death - in fact, only a very small percentage do. And, the death named in each story’s title is not always that assigned to each individual story’s narrator.
Many of the MOD stories are cryptic (“Murder and Suicide, Respectively” by Ryan North), others are incredibly sad (“Despair” by K.M. Lawrence), some are set in the present world, others in a dystopian future (“Loss of Blood” by Jeff Stautz). There are war stories (“Starvation” by M. Bennardo), a Yazuka tale (“Improperly Prepared Blowfish” by Gord Sellar), and many love stories (“Heat Death of the Universe” by James Foreman). “Flaming Marshmallow” by Camille Alexa is funny, and “Nothing” by Pelotard is bittersweet. Two of the most interesting stories are told by the P.O.V. of an inventor of the Machine of Death (“Almond” by John Chernega) and an infomercial producer (“Cocaine and Painlikkers” by David Malki !). There are stories told by personal ads and even one that clocks in at a mere five words.
Machine of Death is an extremely strong collection that should appeal to many readers, not just science fiction readers. After all, death (and fearing it, denying it, accepting it, trying to understand it etc.) is something all humans share. Machine of Death asks a big question: do you want to know how you are going to die (perhaps ironically so, and at an unspecified time)?
This is a highly recommended anthology, worth buying and spreading the (meager) proceeds among the writers and artists. However, if you’re too broke (or likely, too damn cheap and used to getting everything for “free” on the internet) to buy a copy of Machine of Death, it’s also being distributed free of charge (and DRM-free) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. [This means you are free to download them, share them, email them, copy them, print them out, seed them, torrent them, and generally send them about however you like, provided that the manuscript remains unbroken, that attribution is always given, and that all use remains noncommercial.]
There’s also a Machine of Death podcast series, with stories read by their authors. The feed is available here, or subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast catcher.
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So, if there truly existed a Machine of Death, would I take the test?
Absolutely not. I worry enough in my daily life that adding a cryptic declaration of how I was to meet my demise would incapacitate me to the point of being unable to do ANYTHING, and that is not how I would want to life the rest of my days.
No, I would be one of the “anti-faters”, those raging against the Machine, against what is really nothing more than Calvinist predestination. However, I’d likely be a quiet anti-fater, keeping my opinions to myself, not out sabotaging factories or taking baseball bats to individual Machines.
Although, I have to admit, it would be kind of funny to get FLAMING MARSHMALLOW as a destiny.
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