This Is How You Die, Matthew Bennardo
This Is How You Die, Matthew Bennardo
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

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

Author: Matthew Bennardo, David Malki, Ryan North

Narrator: Dan Woren, Will Collyer, Robert Morgan Fisher, Mandy Kaplan, Erin Bennett, Rachael McCabe

Unabridged: 15 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/16/2013

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Amy on August 04, 2013

This is how you die: HEART ATTACK, CANCER, PEACEFULLY, OLD AGE, SURROUNDED BY LOVED ONES. No matter what your slip reads, however, the machine that spat it out is infallible. This is how you die. There is no indication as to when it will happen, and the reading may be frustratingly ambiguous, but th......more

Goodreads review by Tasha on November 02, 2021

Even better than the last collection of stories about the idea of a Machine Of Death, which can tell you how you're going to die, but not when, or what its often opaque predictions actually mean. All the writers interpret the idea differently and make up their own worlds around this central idea, bu......more

Goodreads review by Eric on August 16, 2015

This book was more than just more stories in the Machine of Death world. It was also the Machine of Death in fantasy worlds and science fiction worlds and all kinds of creative new worlds. It was a lot of fun and a great followup to the first book. As usual with anthologies, here are my status updat......more

Goodreads review by Alexa on January 12, 2019

4.5 stars. I LOVED this. Each story was totally creative and different, and many had clever twists that I totally didn't expect. Some were funny, and others were very dark. The "prompt" - humans have developed a way to predict how everyone will die, but not when, and without specifics - is interpret......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on August 30, 2013

Earlier this summer, I tripped up on the book Machine of Death, edited by Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics), short fiction writer Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki! (of Wondermark). The book is a massive collection of short stories centered around the same premise: an invention that tells you how you......more

Quotes

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

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