A. A. Rini

I've been doing my job flawlessly for seven hundred years, collecting souls and delivering them to the next world without a hitch. Then the death bot rears its ugly head and instantly erases my fun of scaring the living daylights out of the living. When the bot predicts death like tomorrow's weather, who's afraid when I make my entrance?An opportunity arrives to escape soul-sucking technology by moving to the Mediterranean. My Italian fixer-upper isn't anything to gloat about. Everyone seems nice-except my new neighbor seems a little too nice. All that's going for me in this sleepy Medieval town is that technology doesn't pose a threat.My joie de vivre returns, but I've got a slew of brand-new problems. What'll I do? I've got a job that's supposed to last for eternity-and I'm not sure I'll make it.If dark humor gives you tingles up and down your spine, read about my gripe with technology in this grim reaper novella that'll keep your sit bones on the edge of your seat.

Is what could have happened but never did as real as what did happen? What did happen, but isn't happening now, happened at another time. Analogously, one can say that what could have happened happens in another possible world. Whatever their views about the reality of such things as possible worlds, philosophers need to take this analogy seriously. Adriane Rini and Max Cresswell exhibit, in an easy step-by-step manner, the logical structure of temporal and modal discourse, and show that every temporal construction has an exact parallel that requires a language that can refer to worlds, and vice versa. They make precise, in a way which can be articulated and tested, the claim that the parallel is at work behind even ordinary talk about time and modality. The book gives metaphysicians a sturdy framework for the investigation of time and modality - one that does not presuppose any particular metaphysical view.

Is what could have happened but never did as real as what did happen? What did happen, but isn't happening now, happened at another time. Analogously, one can say that what could have happened happens in another possible world. Whatever their views about the reality of such things as possible worlds, philosophers need to take this analogy seriously. Adriane Rini and Max Cresswell exhibit, in an easy step-by-step manner, the logical structure of temporal and modal discourse, and show that every temporal construction has an exact parallel that requires a language that can refer to worlds, and vice versa. They make precise, in a way which can be articulated and tested, the claim that the parallel is at work behind even ordinary talk about time and modality. The book gives metaphysicians a sturdy framework for the investigation of time and modality - one that does not presuppose any particular metaphysical view.