creative commons ebook

Machine of Death

Machine of Death is a best-selling book filled with a collection of interesting stories revolving around a single machine. In the book, there's a machine that tells you how you are going to die by using one drop of your blood; it takes this idea and compiles more than 30 stories about this dark but surprisingly entertaining concept. The whole idea came to Ryan North when an offhand comment by a T-Rex in Dinosaur Comics, triggered an onslaught of questions and possibilities. What is this machine made of? What are its capabilities? What if a machine like this did exist? What would you do if you do find out how you are going to die? All this and so much more are dealt with by more than 30+ contributors for this intriguing volume.

Robin Sloan’s “Annabel Scheme” – free novella download licensed under Creative Commons

Robin Sloan, a San Fransisco-based writer best known for his short stories and writing at culture blog Snarkmarket, recently completed work on his first novella, Annabel Scheme. Sloan used Kickstarter, a social fundraising platform, to garner patrons for Annabel Scheme prior to publishing. By offering a number of incentive levels with varying amenities, Sloan was able to raise just shy of $14,000 for the project – over $10,000 more than he had originally asked.