Summary: 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. No dates, no details. Just a slip of paper with a few words spelling out your ultimate fate -- at once all-too specific and maddeningly vague.
A top ten Amazon Customer Favorite in Science Fiction & Fantasy for 2010,
The Machine of Death is an anthology of original stories bound together by a central premise. From the humorous to the adventurous to the mind-bending to the touching, the writers explore what the world would be like if a blood test could predict your death.
But don't think for a moment this is a book entirely composed of stories about people meeting their ironic dooms. There is some of that, of course. But more than that, this is a genre-hopping collection of tales about people who have learned more about themselves then perhaps they should have, and how that knowledge affects their relationships, their perception of the world, and how they feel about themselves.
蚂蚁vp加速器官网 I'd been meaning to read this book ever since I saw it promoted on Twitter back when it was first released, and I'd had the e-book downloaded for a while, but I don't really like reading books on the computer, and then I got this gift for the redditgifts books exchange....
I really like the premise behind these stories, and I found it interesting to see how different authors approached it. Most of these stories aren't actually about people meeting their deaths, either; rather, it's about how knowing how one will die changes their lives, whether significantly or only minutely. It's also interesting to see the worldbuilding each author did for their story.
One thing I found disappointing, though, was how so many of the stories are set in the US and in a time that doesn't look much different from the present. The preface said that submissions from five continents and set in every conceivable genre were received, so it was disappointing to get only one dystopia and one story set in a country outside of the Anglosphere, especially since that would have made the anthology much more varied and interesting. Whilst I powered through the book, most of the individuals stories started standing out much less to me the further I got, and in that sense, I feel like reading the book in stretches, perhaps between other reading material, would keep it fresher.
With that said, I still enjoyed the book overall and would recommend it. I didn't love every single story, but there weren't any that were truly
bad, at least, and I'm looking forward to reading the 'sequel'.