The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius

Are you a Villain Sympathizer!? Do you have delusions of grandeur? Stay up late night plotting a world takeover? Or perhaps find yourself with an insane cackle or a desire to create weapons of mass destruction!? You do!!? Well then The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination is EXACTLY the short fiction collection for you! Villains can make or break a book for me, and I think if I could picture myself in a story, I would so be a villain. They have the best toys, and the in my mind some outrageous looking nutso fun. Alright maybe up until they die anyhow.

When I came across this collection, a little voice inside my head was chanting, please don’t suck, please don’t suck. Haha! Thankfully a mad genius must have compiled it because show more there was nary a story I didn’t enjoy. Be warned the content, style, and overall atmosphere of the stories vary greatly. Some are hilarious (Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List), others are dire and some can even be a bit crass.

I was going to hash out and rate each individual story, but alas I got so wrapped up that I just couldn’t be bothered to stop between stories. Plus there is a nifty little description at the front of each so why should I ruin the fun for you. I can tell you this though, if the theme of the collection appeals to you, I have no doubt that it will be enjoyed. ​

What…you’re still here!? *Breaks out her mind control ray gun* – if you’re a fan of the super villain, mad scientists, or just like to root for the bad guy at times, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination is a collection definitely worth its salt.​ show less

An anthology of stories on the subject of mad scientists, from a fairly impressive collection of authors. Various different kinds of mad science are represented, including superhero, horror, pulp adventure, and science fiction tropes, with plentiful appearances from the scientists' assistants, love interests, and minions.

It's pretty good, overall, as anthologies go. There are several stories I thought were very good to excellent (including the fantastic "Mofongo Knows" by Grady Hendrix, which I'd encountered before in podcast form and was delighted to rediscover here); a few more that were quite enjoyable, if perhaps not very memorable; a bunch that were slight but still mildly entertaining; and only a couple that I actively didn't like show more (mostly because, it turns out, I don't find reading about super-misogynistic mad scientists to be a good time, no matter what might happen to them in the end). There's also one story (Harry Turtledove's "Father of the Groom") that was a bit funny, but would have been a lot funnier if it weren't trying so hard to be funny, and one just-kind-of-okay story that was way, way too long, especially in comparison with the other stories in the volume. (Seriously, was there a word limit no one remembered to tell Diana Gabaldon about?)

That last one does kind of threaten to bog the whole thing down for a while, to be honest, but mercifully I think it doesn't quite succeed, and there were enough really good pieces after that to wash away my annoyance and leave me feeling generally happy with the whole thing. show less

With twenty-two chances, this collection mostly hits its mark. The writing is mostly absurd and superb. And having Stefan Rudnicki narrate is pure perfection. I wouldn't even recommend the print book, as this is HOW one should hear these stories.

Other than the Gabaldon, which I skipped pretty fast, the others were all worth listening to at least twice. I have several favorites, but the first story is perhaps the very best.

Sometimes friends press books into my hands despite the book not being my usual kind of read. A collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories is definitely one of these kinds of books. The title of the book, giving away the thematic link through all the stories, made me think of Pinky and the Brain and their plans to take over the world. Of course, my friend loaned the book to me specifically for the Diana Gabaldon story in it, a story adjacent to the Outlander world, focused on Master Raymond and the Compte St. Germain. But because I am a completest of the worst sort, I had to read all of the stories, not just the one she thought I'd be curious about.

As in all collections, some of the stories were more entertaining than show more others. I particularly like the ones that were comedic in tone with bumbling super villains but then I always liked the campy "Kapow" and "Bam" of the 1960s era Batman tv show too so my taste may be a tad suspect. I am certain that there were many stories that allude to characters or novels in the genre that I completely missed, not being much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader, which those who catch the references will probably find enhance the stories. My level of familiarity is with The Incredibles, the aforementioned Pinky and the Brain, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and for a non-cartoon reference, the baddies in James Bond. Hardly a breadth of literary knowledge of the genre.

Each story in the collection starts with what appears almost to be a case file written by the editor. It summarizes the category of the story, who tells the story, the rule of supervillainry that the story illustrates, and who the story is about. Sometimes these little intros are fun and other times they are too much, giving away more than should be told in advance of the actual story. The stories themselves are of varying lengths and varying seriousness. Some appear to be part of their authors' larger universes while others seem to be stand alone. A unique idea for a collection, I'm not sure this necessarily made me any more likely to read some of these authors but for the most part, it was a fun and unlikely bit of reading for me. show less

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My review copy was an eARC provided for free by Tor through Netgalley.

Reviewing short story collections is tough. No matter how much work the collector put into it, there’s always going to be one or two that you don’t think work. I can’t give a rundown review of all of them, so what I am going to do is discuss a few I thought were good, a few I thought… weren’t, and then talk about how well the collection works together.

The first story (Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List by Austin Grossman) is a strong opener, which is always necessary in a collection. Witty, amusing and a nice riff on the supervillain theme, as well as on the nature of the lies we tell about show more ourselves to the people we love. Also, I jsut love the writing. Grossman is a strong writer, and does humour well.

In three more weeks I had a working blaster, and we met to see Hannah and Her Sisters at the Regent. I fell asleep on your shoulder, dreaming the genetic code for a race of sentient tigers.

Wonderful. But as well as being funny, it’s also quite an honest and touching look at a troubled and turbulent relationship, where both parties have been lying about something big. I’m sure there’s more than one reader that can relate.

From that onto another story about villains and love, except this one is by Harry Turtledove and there’s not much to say except the fact that I’ve never really liked his writing and this short didn’t convince me otherwise. That may be heresy, but I am what I am and I’ve never been keen on that sort of self-conscious trope acknowledgement. Far too arch and knowing. Clever, but in love with its own cleverness. Blah. Not for me.

There are a couple of good-but-not-great pieces before we get to the next one I really liked – Instead Of A Loving Heart by Jeremiah Tolbert, a story about artificial intelligence and true, uncaring evil. It’s very sad, and bleak, and it makes my heart hurt to read.

I simply do not have enough space to review the entirety of the rest of the collection, but in all I was pretty impressed. There were plenty of good stories, a few great ones and very few bad stories – though there were a couple I thought were mediocre, or that I thought didn’t fit. In general, it’s a well-curated collection, with most of the stories being above average and working together very well to increase the strength of the whole. I may have to track down a physical copy for dipping in and out. show less

Fantastic stories that I found really entertaining. The ones I liked the most are the ones that play with the premise of evil geniuses and world domination and pervert it, transforming it in somethint wonderfull.

I liked this collection for the most part. I could have done without the ~80pg romance novella from Diana Gabaldon, which didn't really fit the mood or theme of the rest of the book, but most of the other stories were quite good. There's one near the end about a political science evil genius that was particularly interesting in light of current events.