Book Rec: Machine of Death
Machine of Death is an anthology edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki. It's a collection of short stories set in a world where there is technology that can tell you how you will die - though it won't tell you when.
I stumbled over the German translation of this collection quite by accident, and found it to be an unexpected gem. The shared premise makes the stories feel like fanfic quite a bit. Clearly this work emerged from the geek culture, plus it is available both in print (and for Kindle) and as a PDF which you can download for free on the website.
Naturally, as is pars of the course in an anthology, some stories are really good and some are pretty bad, and most live in the gray area between. If you only want the good stuff, I would advise you to read the first half of the book (that is, until you reach the 50% mark on Kindle), skip the next 20% and continue reading to the end. But the premise makes it easy to write a good story. Similar to fanfic, the concept allows for great in-depth explorations of the topic, though on the downside, also like in fanfic, time will occasionally be wasted on explaining away logical errors of the canonic concept even when that doesn't add anything to the story. There are few stories with actual unique notions on how that machine would change the world, fewer still with a noteworthy scifi premise, but again, the shared premise of them all is sound enough to carry you through that. If you love short stories but haven't been daring to buy any anthologies due to how they usually suck, this is for you.
I stumbled over the German translation of this collection quite by accident, and found it to be an unexpected gem. The shared premise makes the stories feel like fanfic quite a bit. Clearly this work emerged from the geek culture, plus it is available both in print (and for Kindle) and as a PDF which you can download for free on the website.
Naturally, as is pars of the course in an anthology, some stories are really good and some are pretty bad, and most live in the gray area between. If you only want the good stuff, I would advise you to read the first half of the book (that is, until you reach the 50% mark on Kindle), skip the next 20% and continue reading to the end. But the premise makes it easy to write a good story. Similar to fanfic, the concept allows for great in-depth explorations of the topic, though on the downside, also like in fanfic, time will occasionally be wasted on explaining away logical errors of the canonic concept even when that doesn't add anything to the story. There are few stories with actual unique notions on how that machine would change the world, fewer still with a noteworthy scifi premise, but again, the shared premise of them all is sound enough to carry you through that. If you love short stories but haven't been daring to buy any anthologies due to how they usually suck, this is for you.