It is generally understood that appreciation of the comic mode is a subjective matter. There may well be some readers who are moved to delighted laughter by Kat Beyer‘s story, "The Strange Desserts of Professor Natalie Doom," but this reviewer is not able to count herself among them. The narration feels labored and the situation unoriginal.

We find ourselves dragged back to the early days of science fiction, when the mad scientist reigned supreme, in a world which knows not the blessings of equal opportunity. Natalie’s mother, once the shapely, wide-eyed lab assistant, has now been retired to the kitchen, to which, after messing up too many of her father’s experiments, Natalie is exiled as well. She immediately makes the best of the situation by turning the kitchen into her own lab, where her advances in ballistic baking attract the interest of the Defense Department. In a spare moment of reflection, she also discovers the principles of feminism—discovers, not invents, for some truths have always been there to be found by those who need them.