Reviews
"Demo Mode" reviewed by Tangent Online
"Tom Gerencer is a promising new writer. Here he takes the idea of a virus which infects the brain to automatically teach you something new, such as dentistry or decoupage, and runs with it. His protagonist is a boring force-field siding salesman whose girlfriend leaves him, so he goes to a discount Neuromart to be taught Hungarian, and ends up knowing Esperanto instead. But worse ... let's leave the rest to the story, and I'll just say it's clever and funny."
"A Taste of Damsel" Reviewed by Bluejack SF author profiles
"In his author blurb, Tom Gerencer confesses that he has written "enough unpublishable drek to wallpaper most of Ohio." While this is clearly not unpublishable, and it can't really be called drek, per se, it is not the kind of humor that bluejack takes much pleasure in. Let's just say, I won't be looking for humor tips in this particular story and leave it at that. To get a sense of it, just imagine a hip, wisecracking dragon showing up in some small midwestern city, exchanging a few pleasantries with a copy clerk, who flits from abject fear to trading wisecracks of his own. A few police cars are smashed, a little damage done, and the dragon goes off in search of the strangely elusive sheep."
"Oceans Eleven" reviewed by Green Man Review
Mike Resnick and Tom Gerencer really put their best feet forward with 'Ocean's Eleven.' I never wondered whether the ocean had feelings and perhaps got tired of its task. Thankfully these two did! What follows after the ocean pulls out and goes job hunting on land is nothing but hijinx and hilarity, and will have you laughing out loud at the predicaments it gets into.
"Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now" reviewed by SFReader
Tom Gerencer injects new life into this perennial complaint both stylistically and plot-wise as he scribes a smooth and funny tale of a talking pepper, school-spaceships and teacher-aliens. Conspiracy theories will never be the same after this excessive and excessively hilarious romp that confirms what anyone who’s ever eaten school cafeteria food already knows -- it’s safer to bring your own brown bag.
"Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now" reviewed by TangentOnline
My enjoyment of Tom Gerencer's "Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now" is a testament to the joy I took in its inspired lunacy ... complete with a talking pepper, evil alien administrators, and a space sheep -- er, ship -- disguised as a high school. While plot holes abound, maintaining a logical plot is clearly not the point here. "Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now" is hilarious nonsense which reaches the level of Daniel Pinkwater's work on several occasions, and for aficionados of absurdist humor, I cannot recommend it too highly.
