"Laser Eyes Ain't Everything" by Effie Seiberg in Diabolical Plots DPFiction #123B by Effie Seiberg Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine
Genres: science fiction, short stories, superheroes
Pages: 12
Published by Diabolical Plots on May 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website
Goodreads
Come for the superhero shenanigans, stay for the accessibility catharsis.
My Review:
This year’s Hugo readings are winding down with this penultimate (next-to-the-last) short story. Which is a surprisingly fun bit of a wind-up, albeit with just a few caveats.
On the one hand, this is very much message fiction. And on the other, it’s a surprisingly good story AND an equally surprising if very short readalike for Hench and Assistant to the Villain.
The story takes place in a world where superheroes are commonplace. Or at least common enough not to need secret identities. What they do need – and have – is a union. Something that new superhero RazorBeam is probably all too familiar with. As a mundane but wheelchair bound assistant in the City Planner’s Office, she may even have been a member of one.
Not that it did her any good either when it came to pushing forward her proposal for traffic circles for safer access to street intersections for everyone and not just people like her. Or when the budget cuts came for her job.
But after she was zapped by a falling piece of alien spaceship debris, she joined the ranks of the Super-Abled. Her new laser eyes might not help her mobility issues, but they should raise her ability to get heroic-type things accomplished. Because that’s what superheroes do.
Getting, or even creating, traffic circles should be a piece of cake, amirite?
But not when her Super-Abled Local Union can’t be bothered to make the Union building handicapped accessible. Especially when they make it clear that RazorBeam is only part of the Super-Abled when they need to showcase their diversity.
What they really need is RazorBeam’s analytical skills to help them figure out why supervillain Doctor Croc (animals not shoes) is going all “Hulk Smash” on a bunch of seemingly innocent old buildings.
Or perhaps it’s time for the new superhero and the destructive supervillain to make a really super splash – one non-compliant old building at a time.
Escape Rating B: This is very definitely message fiction. It also definitely works. Not that the message isn’t emblazoned on every page, but that the story, for the most part, is good and feels entirely too real – particularly for a superhero story – and has a very reasonable character arc for its superhero protagonist.
Most superhero stories stray pretty far from the real. This one doesn’t AND it serves its message up with a rueful smile.
Reviewing this is hard, as I’d rather not put my foot in my mouth up to the knee in this review because the core of the story is rooted in an experience that is not part of my own.
Howsomever, the experience of working in government service is one that I have had, and all of the excuses and delays and obfuscations and EVERYTHING about all the half-assed reasons that the city government she worked for and the union she hoped to work with won’t (and it’s not can’t, it’s won’t and there’s a huge difference) all rang very, very true.
The one part of this story that didn’t quite ring true was Doctor Croc. Not about the way he became a supervillain, or even his reasons for becoming a supervillain. His reasons for turning to the Dark Side do make sense. What doesn’t make sense is that he goes on his destructive rampage without ever telling ANYONE why he’s doing what he’s doing. It’s obvious to him, but he doesn’t even do a bwahaha evil speech justifying his seeming insanity.
Admittedly he’s not all that evil and he’s not insane, but if he’s expecting a reaction to his destruction he needs to at least give people a hint about what reaction he’s looking for.
(It’s all about old buildings being ‘grandfathered in’ in regards to compliance with the ADA. Meaning they don’t have to because they’re old and built way before the standards existed. Minor damage just gets repaired but complete destruction requires complete replacement which gets around the grandfathering they’re using to get around the law.)
Which is where it becomes inevitable that Doctor Croc and RazorBeam join forces. She knows how the system works. She’s capable of focused destruction that WILL get the job done. It’s a job they both want done and personally know needs to be done. They’re going to be an awesome team.
And if they remind readers just a bit of either Hench or Assistant to the Villain – not that either of them is the henchperson or the assistant to the other – so much the better.
So the story works, their solution works, and it’s all delightfully lighthearted on top of the message.
I started this one with mixed feelings, because message fiction generally gets a bad rap, and often that’s deserved. A story has to tell a story, not beat the reader over the head about its message. There may not be a ramp to the Super-Abled Union building, but the story about that lack ramps up to its goal very well both in making its point, in telling a good tale, and in sending the reader off with a smile.
I have one final story left to go, and the Hugo ballots are due on Saturday. My favorite so far is still a coin flip between “In My Country” and “Kaiju Agonistes”, but this one rolled delightfully into the middle of the pack for me. It’s certainly one I’ll think about and use as an example for how well it does what it does.
Appropriately, the last story in my Hugo reading is “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days”, because the future is so often what SF is all about. Even if, or especially because it’s about a future where things have gone terribly, horribly wrong.
