Find An Ending, But Don’t Cheat

There’s a concept in storytelling called deus ex machina , which is when a conflict is resolved by an unreasonably lucky occurrence, rather than the characters overcoming the obstacle. I first became aware of it when I took drama in high school. It stuck out for a few reasons:

• It sounds cool in a way that other Latin phrases like habeas corpus and carpe diem don’t.
• It sounds even cooler when you realize it literally means “god from a machine”
• It allows you to condemn stories for a reason that would be too hard to explain otherwise. So many people want to a happy ending and don’t care how it comes about, and it’s a struggle to explain why these happy endings aren’t satisfying. But now I can just say it’s a deus ex machina, and they say, huh? But I feel better.

But I have to say to science fiction creators: please stop using this in titles. It started in 2000 with the cyberpunk video game Deus Ex. Okay, that made sense, since the blurring of humanity and machines gives the phrase new meaning, with the idea that what was once thought of as exclusively divine could now come from a machine. But then there was a movie about humanoid robots a few years ago called Ex Machina, essentially copying the same idea, but leaving out a different word sound original.

Now I see that there’s another game coming out called Daemon x Machina. Sure, that’s funny and appropriate to the subject matter (battling giant robots.) And old-school Unix users will appreciate the use of “daemon.” But really, can’t we come up with some new ways to describe stories involving robots, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics? It’s becoming a cliche and something should end it. I don’t even care if it’s something unanticipated that comes from out of nowhere.