Love, Death + Robots: The Official Anthology: Volume 2 & 3

Love, Death and Robots

By: Geoff Brown, Amanda J. Spedding, Tim Miller, Joe Lansdale, John Scalzi, Harlan Ellison, J. G. Ballard, Alan Baxter, various, David Fincher, Neal Asher, Justin Coates

Narrated by: Joe Hempel, Josh Innerst, Hannah Curtis, Cary Hite, Bradford Hastings, Joel Simler, P. J. Ochlan, full cast

The fifteen stories and three screenplays that make up Volumes Two and Three of the Emmy® Award–winning Netflix Original series Love, Death + Robots.

Featuring bestselling authors and screenwriters from all over the globe, curated by filmmakers Tim Miller and David Fincher, and Supervising Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

Stories by Neal Asher, Paolo Bacigalupi, J. G. Ballard, Alan Baxter, Justin Coates, Harlan Ellison, Joachim Heijndermans, Joe Lansdale, Rich Larson, Alberto Mielgo, Jeff Fowler & Tim Miller, John Scalzi, Bruce Sterling, and Michael Swanwick.Full contents:

“Automated Customer Service” by John Scalzi
“Ice” by Rich Larson
“Pop Squad” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Snow in the Desert” by Neal Asher
“The Tall Grass” by Joe R. Lansdale
“All Through the House” by Joachim Heijndermans
“Life Hutch” by Harlan Ellison
“The Drowned Giant” by J. G. Ballard
“Three Robots: Human Habitats” by John Scalzi
“Bad Travelling” by Neal Asher
“The Very Pulse of the Machine” by Michael Swanwick
“Night of the Mini-Dead” by Jeff Fowler & Tim Miller
“Kill Team Kill” by Justin Coates
“Swarm” by Bruce Sterling
“Mason’s Rats” by Neal Asher
“In Vaulted Halls Entombed” by Alan Baxter
“Jibaro” by Alberto Mielgo
“Three Robots: Two Versions Intro” by John Scalzi
“Three Robots Report Back on the Habitats in Which Humanity Chose to See Out Its Final Days” by John Scalzi

©2022 Anthology by Cohesion Press. Stories © Individual authors (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

Mix bag but some solid stories.

This reminded me of the hit more miss seasons 2-3 had. Some of them like swarm, vaulted tomb and the John scalzi stories were great the rest were a bit meh. Also the editing was off, you can tell with swarm where it was missing and few stories were in one chapter. However the narration was on point for all stories.

Yet, another stellar pile of stories.

Yet, another defenitively stellar pile of stories with some of the best authors in the genre. I enjoyed every one of these, and the screenplays here are great too. Yet again, I've not seen the series but the stories are my firt foray, and I've absolutely loved every one of them and can't wait to read more. All the authors are on my TBR list right now. And, the narration, as always was absolutely superb. Thanks guys!! Enjoy, and Happy Reading!!

The chickens laid some turkeys

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter whether the chicken or the egg came first, but here I’d recommend going with the original format (Netflix’s seasons 2 and 3 of Love, Death + Robots). I think Volume 1 worked for me in both audiobook and on-screen formats because the stories themselves were written first by the authors and then adapted for the silver screen. Here, it feels like the on-screen concept came first and the authors wrote the story second.

Thus, a story like Jibaro, featuring a deaf knight and no dialogue whatsoever, is a visual, musical, wild ride that becomes even harder to grasp in audiobook’s static telling-not-showing spoken word.

Still, there are enough gems to make this worthwhile. Scalzi and Lansdale spun fun tales (again, perhaps because they were written first as shorts and adapt to screen later). Bad Travelling by Neal Asher was a deliciously cutthroat high seas monster fest. As others have noted, Swarm cuts off the ending and, besides, I recommend the on-screen format.

Where the rest of the story?

I'm was just listening to The Swarm when it ended suddenly. I thought at first I accidentally hit the skip chapter button but no, the story just ends mid sentence. This seems like a huge oversight, does noone proof these releases? Incredibly disappointing.

Lackadaisical Editing

Several of the stories are cut off or placed into separate chapters with others. Hopefully this gets corrected soon, as I would really have liked to have been able to finish some of them.