The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius by John Joseph Adams (editor)
Started: 2014-07-06 / Finished: 2014-09-09
Rating: 3 (Would be 4 if the The Space Between and following stories had been in a different book.)
2014-07-09: Actual start date wasn’t recorded as I was just looking for something besides the novels that I wasn’t enjoying. I think this date is correct though. Only one story in but it was a pretty good one.
2014-07-15: Some good stuff, some meh stuff. Mostly good but nothing great. All of this short story reading is reminding me that I don’t generally like anthologies that much.
2014-09-03: Restarted the other day and very much enjoying these.
2014-09-07: Was enjoying the short stories immensely and then ran into this stupid Comte de Saint Germain novella that really, REALLY, doesn’t belong in this anthology. It’s just going on and on, and there is possibly a mad scientist and time travel involved which might be interesting if the author would stop talking about nuns and sick people and voice and visions. It’s not a bad story and in another anthology I might enjoy it but it doesn’t fit in with this anthology and it’s TOO LONG to be where it is.
2014-09-08: The story I was complaining about was The Space Between by Diana Gabaldon. It was a poor fit for this anthology AND the ending sucked. After a VERY LONG story… nothing happens. Two mysterious men go poof and the want-to-be nun decides to kiss a guy. Nothing is explained and there’s no payoff for suffering through this misplaced monstrosity. With a better ending and in a different anthology it would be a decent story.
2014-09-09: OMFG will this book never end! There have been a couple of good ones since The Space Between but holy shit was it really necessary to put EVERY story in there? I think part of it is my shortening attention span but there are a number of these that didn’t belong here.
2014-09-16: It ended. The last story, The Food Taster’s Boy was a downer. Actually, I think everything after The Space Between was a downer so my advice would be to read up to, but not including, that story, and then throw the book away. Or, I suppose you could keep it but treat the remaining stories like a separate book. There was some good stuff there but it definitely wasn’t in the same vein as the earlier stories that featured a lot of humor and were more accurately Mad Scientists stories while the end of the book was more Washed Up Villains than Mad Scientist.