"Letter To The Editor" by David D. Levine

[[deleted user]]

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

"Letter To The Editor" by David D. Levine

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.

[[deleted user]]

A story that takes its amusement by writing about something familiar from a switched perspective, that of the villain, it in the form of a self-justifying letter to the editor. A Lex Luther type villain muses on his long-running feud with a superhero known as Ultimate Man, a stand-in for Superman. Includes the wry observation that Ultimate Man's powers have been growing, from leaping tall buildings to actual flying, etc. The allegedly-evil Dr. Tallon explains that all his activities have been for the benefit of mankind, an explanation that might be accurate or might be simply delusional.

I liked the observation: "In real life, the most important moments in science are not greeted by the exclamation 'Eureka!' but by a puzzled frown and the words 'That’s funny…'"

Enjoyed the story. The letter to the editor format keeps it brief and brevity is the soul of wit.

***1/2*

[[deleted user]]

Want more David Levine? His 2015 military-SF novella Damage is available to read @Tor.com

[Jim]

G33z3r pretty much wrote my review of this story. I really liked the idea of 'framing' the story. Great perspective.

[Andrea]

I liked the perspective, that while someones actions could be "good" or "evil" you need to look at the motivations to know the truth. DC and Marvel both did that with movies recently, but this story was much more fun :) At least the part where the hero could be as much a danger to the general population as the villain.

And I liked how several of the stories have a similar "tone", I guess if you're writing from a mad scientist's perspective they all talk/think about the same way, but rather than getting boring I found it brought a few of the stories together, and this was one of them.