Oakland.pm
Reviews
Review of "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell: A Guide to World Domination"
reviewed by George Woolley

Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell
By Illiad
April 2000 
1-56592-861-X, Order Number: 861X
132 pages, $12.95 US, $18.95 CA, £8.95 UK 

The above is taken from the O'Reilly online catalog entry
which contains more information about the book.

Good. (3 owls of 5 in O'Reilly terms)

The User Friendly (UF) Comic Strip is about the saga 
of a cast of characters who work at or are somehow involved 
with Columbia Internet, a fictional Internet Service Provider.
This is the second of four (so far) book compilations 
of the User Friendly comic strip.

Based on the title of the book,
I expected a humorous guide to world domination
in something like the format of an O'Reilly Nutshell book.
I also expected lots of User Friendly strips
and especially ones involving Cthulhu, Pitr and Crud Puppy,
who are all evil geniuses.
I expected to encounter some other evil geniuses as well,
for example, Bill Gates.

Well:
* The book is geeky funny.
* The book contains plenty of UF strips,
  actually more than I expected.
* Pitr appears often.
However:
* The book doesn't focus on world domination.
* Cthulhu does not appear at all. 
  We don't see much of Crud Puppy either. Darn! :(
* The format is not that of a Nutshell book. 
  For example, there is no table of contents or index.

The book is very funny,
but it does not deliver fully on the title of the book.
I think it's time for a second edition
with more focussed content
and following, more closely, the format
of a typical O'Reilly Nutshell book.

The book is appropriate for geeks
and people interested in learning about geeks and geek culture.

George Woolley of Oakland.pm

written: 2003-09-24