This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

by Matthew Bennardo, Ryan North, David Malki I Narrated by Dan Woren, Will Collyer, Robert Morgan Fisher, Mandy Kaplan, Erin Bennett, Rachael McCabe

Overview

If a machine could predict how you would die, would you want to know? This is the tantalizing premise of This Is How You Die, the brilliant follow-up anthology to the self-published bestseller, Machine of Death.

THIS IS HOW YOU DIE
Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

The machines started popping up around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn't give dates or specific circumstances-just a single word or phrase. DROWNED, CANCER, OLD AGE, CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. And though the predictions were always accurate, they were also often frustratingly vague. OLD AGE, it turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or being shot by an elderly, bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machines held onto 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.

This addictive anthology--sinister, witty, existential, and fascinating--collects the best of the thousands of story submissions the editors received in the wake of the success of the first volume, and exceeds the first in every way.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

This sequel to Machine of Death presents more tales and comics about the infallible contraption that tells you how you will die, but not when or where. The predictions are often cryptic—“old age” could mean getting gunned down by an angry senior citizen—but always enlightening. Sherlock Holmes encounters an MoD in John Takis’s “Apitoxin,” while another is preserved into the far future in Erika Hammerschmidt’s ”Furnace.” An intrepid PI uses MoD result slips to hunt a serial killer in Daliso Chaponda’s “Screaming, Crying, Alone, and Afraid.” Richard Salter’s choose-your-own-adventure-styled “Your Choice” lets the reader select an ending. Not every story ends with death, but each does an interesting job of presenting characters’ reactions—resignation, defiance, joy—to acquiring this incredible knowledge. This fun, thoughtful, and sometimes dark anthology will stir readers to wonder about their own “results.” (July)

From the Publisher

Praise for THIS IS HOW YOU DIE:

"THIS IS HOW YOU DIE is a brilliantly addictive book that reads like a series of existential, death-obsessed Twilight Zone episodes. It's a book that can somehow make "brain toxoplasmosis" jump right off the page. It's fun and twisted, but also surprisingly deep and almost meditative in parts. Very highly recommended." -Seth Grahame-Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Unholy Night

"This volume takes the already cool concept and pushes it in dozens of fantastic new directions." -Brandon Sanderson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mistborn trilogy and Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series

Praise for Machine of Death:

"Machine of Death is a marvelous collection, riddled with intelligence, creative reach, and a frankness that makes the best use of the central gimmick."
--The Onion A.V. Club

"Recalls the best writings of Harlan Ellison and Charles Beaumont.... Machine of Death brought me laughs, terror and tears....Highly recommended."
--Paradox Magazine

Library Journal

Using a simple blood test to calculate mortality patterns in individuals, the Machine of Death produces slips of paper identifying a person's manner of death. How that demise takes place—or when—is the subject of 31 stories and 13 comic strips contributed by authors, illustrators, and graphic artists selected by the editorial committee. This follow-up to Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die demonstrates that knowing is not always understanding. Each story is paired with a full-page illustration, while single-page comic strips tell their own compressed stories with wit and skill. VERDICT Most of the stories here show an ingenious approach to the anthology's theme; together, they construct a compulsively readable journey into the uncertain future.

Kirkus Reviews

In this anthology, contributions from authors across a spectrum of genres yield stories about a fantastical Machine of Death, "which can predict anybody's ultimate fate based on a simple blood test." This is the follow-up volume to the popular self-published anthology Machine of Death (2010). To recap, in 2007, Bennardo, Malki and North solicited stories from contributors, with one caveat: Each story had to involve the Death Machine, a device that would analyze a drop of blood, then would generate a slip of paper telling the person how he or she would die. In this second volume, the editors narrowed over 1,700 submissions down to 31 stories, punctuated by 13 comics. While readers might expect a wide swath of sci-fi, the entries (with names like "Bite Wound," "Got Too Extreme" and "Massive Blood Loss") are more diverse than that. "Apitoxin" unreels a classic Sherlock Holmes whodunit, while "Lazarus Reactor Fission Sequence" is old-school sci-fi in the flavor of Harry Harrison or Martin Caidin. One of the great stories, "Cancer," tells the tale of a woman whose cells hold a secret à la Henrietta Lacks, and "Your Choice" offers a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure mortality story. Whether the cause of death is "Screaming, Crying, Alone, and Afraid," "Blunt Force Trauma Delivered by Spouse," "Peacefully" or "Old Age," none of the stories unravel in the way one might think. Funny, frightening, clever; no one in these stories emerges unscathed.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173498199
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	07/16/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

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