The Darwin Awards 3: Survival of the Fittest Wendy Northcutt Plume 252 pp. ISBN: 0-452-28572-0 Available from Powell's Books.

The Darwin Awards archive was launched online in 1994 by Wendy Northcutt while she waited for her experiments at a neuroscience research laboratory at Stanford to run their course; it moved to its own domain in 1997. It now ranks among the three thousand most-visited websites and entertains approximately a half million visitors per month.

Just in case the casual reader might think that just anyone can win a Darwin Award, Northcutt provides an extensive Introduction describing the rules of the Awards and the rigorous standards to which nominations are subjected. The most important, of course, is that the nominated individual must have removed themselves from the gene pool in a "spectacularly stupid manner." This eliminates truly accidental deaths and all suicide attempts. Also eliminated from contention are children and the handicapped. Finally, the story must be confirmed -- or at least plausible.

All candidates are screened carefully before they can be chosen as winners. Each submission to the web site is reviewed by a team of moderators who decide if it's a potential Award, Honorable Mention (these consist mostly of those who have somehow failed in their quest to quickly dive headfirst off this mortal coil), or (unverifiable) Personal Account. It is then moved to the public Slush Pile. An average of five hundred stories are submitted per month; only about one in six is accepted to the Slush Pile. Putting them in the Slush Pile opens them up for public review. After readers review and rate the stories for at least one month, Northcutt sorts the Slush Pile based on popularity. Only one in three is moved from the Slush Pile to the permanent archive -- approximately ten to fifteen stories per month. Once they are moved to the archive visitors to the site cast votes, report mistakes, corrections and confirmations, and some are linked to discussion threads. Darwin Awards are continually updated (or removed) based on new information. The last chapter of the book lists some of those who were disqualified, and the reasons for their disqualification, after this final public review. Most of these disqualifications came after having appeared in the website archive.

I (and most of my acquaintances) have been a fan of the Awards for several years. However, it is a bit morbid to go through an entire book detailing the deaths of so many people. Readers who experience a sudden surge of guilt about deriving pleasure from the deaths of others may want to take these stories a few at a time -- the book makes this convenient by grouping stories by theme into five nifty categories (Law Enforcement, Men, Explosions, Women, and Technology). If nothing else, there are lots of cautionary tales here, including two good reasons why you shouldn't use gasoline to kill ants (come to think of it, people have found out the hard way that there are a whole lot of things with which gasoline should not be mixed), a couple of tales to dissuade you from booby-trapping your home (or shed), and whole lotta reasons for not selling guns to stupid people.

Leaving aside some of the more lurid reports (coat hangers should not be used to retrieve objects from a human body), there is some real entertainment value here. The invention involved in these deaths is truly amazing -- a wellspring of invention exceeded only by the incredible amount of luck bestowed upon those Honorable Mentions and Personal Accounts who somehow survived their various experiences (Many cases will make you scratch your head and wonder how on earth someone could have survived. For instance, setting off the explosion -- on purpose -- of a thirteen-gallon trash bag filled with oxygen and acetylene). And keep Northcutt's wise admonition in mind: if you yourself are not willing to be nominated for an award, you probably shouldn't read this book. Once you've come to terms with that, you might as well get all three volumes!

-- Robert E. Thomas

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