YMMV / Machine of Death

• Fridge Brilliance: Astute readers may notice that no one actually dies in "Rock and Roll." It turns out that the rockstar who was predicted to die by rock and roll made the whole thing up for publicity. He was really predicted to die of thyroid cancer. The real "death by rock and roll" slip belonged to the protagonist, but her encounter with the rockstar did not result in her death. What happened? Did the Machine screw this one up? No. She discovered that a man she'd respected, even idolized, had deceived not only her, but countless other fans. It was a case of Broken Pedestal. She didn't die by rock and roll, but the small part of her that had admired this guy did.
• Fridge Horror: Comes from the story "Loss of Blood," and explained (albeit unintentionally) in "Firing Squad" and "Heat Death of the Universe." In the first, there is a very Ninteen Eighty Four type "Ministry" that sentences people with transportation related cards to death by purposefully putting them in transportation doomed to crash. They say this will cut down on wilder, more unforeseen accidents. Unfortunately, the other two explain that this leads to a combination of Circular Reasoning and Your Mind Makes It Real, where the certainty of the Machine of Death's prediction is because other people knew the result of the test, or guessed what the test might say.

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