The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius: 2013 Book #16

2 of 5 stars

Pretty typical of an anthology of short stories based around a theme – you get some good, some meh, and some downright boring.

Let’s start with the good. Of all the stories, I tended to like the ones with a more humorous bend to them. Specifically, “The Angel of Death has a Business Plan,” by Heather Lindsley and “Captain Justice Saves the Day,” by Genevieve Valentine. Probably not a coincidence that these both juxtaposed a realistic take on a character with the comic-book-like cartoon sketch of the mad scientist. That dichotomy worked best in these stories, particularly in the email exchanges between the technologically inept Dr. Mason and Brenda in the latter story.

There was a lot of “meh” in this collection for me, and consequently, I found myself growing tired of the same tropes after awhile. In fact, the longest story of the collection, “The Space Between,” I gave up on. There was a lot in this collection that was just plain uninteresting. Nearly every author painted the mad scientist as a caricature, the evil villain with some grand, dastardly plot and pitted against a typical superhero. I much preferred the few stories that explored the idea of a mad scientist in a unique way, like in “The Last Dignity of Man,” by Marjorie M. Liu. In it, a man who’s been given the name Alexander Luthor spends his whole life obsessed with living up to his namesake, in a world where there is no Superman. He is in a position to change the world, and has the power to. He wants to give the world a Superman, but he thinks the only way to do so is make himself the villain.

There are plenty of big name, award winning authors in this collection. Nearly everyone has at least one Hugo award under their belt. Many will probably enjoy it, but I would have preferred a more diverse representation of the subject.