Diabolical Plots #6, August 2015

“The Superhero Registry” by Adam Gaylord

Reviewed by Harlen Bayha

In “The Superhero Registry,” Adam Gaylord reminds us it’s not the superpower that makes the hero, even though it often makes for the hero’s name. The registry is a bureaucratic agency manned by normal folk, who apparently have some governmental reason to track and provide codenames for superdames and dudes. When a fresh-faced super lacks the initiative and creativity to forge one on his own, Lois, his registry agent, racks her brain to come up with something good. When that fails, after a rough morning of back and forth with her client, she comes up with a stupendous name which her client agrees to but, humorously, does not entirely grasp. Lois strikes me as fun, charismatic, and tidy, just like the story she inhabits.

Harlen Bayha really wants to meet an artificial intelligence so he can make snide comments about toasters until all of humanity is endangered because he’s a thoughtless jerk. He also has a bad habit of writing fiction while sober.