"Aneurysm" was first published in Machine of Death: Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (2010), edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki !, according to a concept initially devised by North. How would you live your life if you knew how you were going to die?"The Glacier's Stone, The Mammoth's Ivory" was written within the Machine of Death world concept and first published in The Girl at the End of the World, Vol. 1 (2014), a collection of apocalyptic stories with female protagonists, edited by Adele Wearing and published by Fox Spirit Books.In "Aneurysm," a group of friends play a morbid party game, while one man plots to turn knowledge of his own death to social advantage. Set on Worthington Glacier in Valdez, Alaska, in "The Glacier's Stone, The Mammoth's Ivory," members of the final generation of humanity decide how to live in the decades preceding the world's inevitable end.