--- category: '' date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000 description: '' link: '' slug: '' tags: books, goodreads title: 'Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (Machine of Death, #1)' type: text ---
Cover for Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (Machine of Death, #1)

Review:

I got this book as a free PDF after reading about it at Wondermark. I had not read any short story collections in a few years and had forgotten the best thing about them: if some piece is weak, it goes away quickly.

A lot of the stories are good, some very good (Randall Munroe's for instance) and some... some are not so good.

There is one that had me laughing for minutes and was just a single line. The last one is just *killer* short fiction.

I think the collection would have improved if a bigger "canonical" framework had been established by the editors, since there are contradictory lines everywhere, but hey, it's a high concept book, it's fun to read, and it's pretty cool.