Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

"Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List" by Austin Grossman

From the scifi anthology The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, part of our discussion of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination anthology.

This story can be read on-line @Tor.com.

This was a perfect way to begin. I've only read one book by him before Soon I Will Be Invincible which is quite similar. It was a hoot, too.

He managed to build quite a world into this short story. It uses bits of stock from all over to create a unique situation. Almost every line made me chuckle.

It's harder than you think for a being of pure scientific evil to hold regular office hours.

Relationships seem tricky, too. I wondered at the apology all the way until the end & the reveal was wonderful!

I enjoyed this story. It made me laugh. The itemized list is quite funny in itself, mixing the profound with the trivial, and it's all comically phrased. It actually did make me chuckle, repeatedly. Grossman has a nice talent for the clever parenthetical aside. And as you say, Jim, the ending reveal is pretty amusing, too. There's an actual story here!

Soon I Will Be Invincible is already on my to-read list, but I'm going to have to move it up into the echelons of stories that I actually have a chance to get to in this lifetime. :)

By the way, it occurred to me while reading that there's no specific information in the story that would allow you to definitively assign a gender to Professor Incognito. The obvious assumption would be male. (If the professor were a women, would she be Professor Incognita? :)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeV9g...

Brendan wrote: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeV9g..."

I was think more of his Skullcrusher Mountain :)

I was torn between which one to pick.

I love the bits where he wasn't apologizing for being a mad scientist but just for doing regular things, like not behaving at family dinners, and how those mundane bits were mixed in with the mad scientist bits.

The unusual form made for a great start to the anthology. So often I've found the first story turns me off (either its depressing, gross, disturbing, etc) but this one made me want to read more.