This polar bear has had it with global warming ruining its habitat, Can it flip the tables on humanity?

Dear Evil Engineer,

I am a resentful and wealthy polar bear. You can only imagine the trauma my species has experienced; it wasn’t long after the hunting stopped that our habitat started melting away into the ocean. We’re sick to the (very large) teeth with humans and it is finally time to exact revenge. Is it possible to engineer the climate to send Earth into a permanent winter?

Yours
A polar bear

A lovestruck villain would like to engineer the ideal romantic gift.

Dear Evil Engineer,

For 35 years, I have considered myself a strong, independent villain who doesn’t need a partner in crime, but I have recently become smitten with someone I met at my local farmers’ market. She is gorgeous, funny, has a fluffy white cat, and makes the best beetroot cupcakes I’ve ever tasted. She has invited me to go horse riding with her next weekend.

I think this date is a great opportunity to impress her. I’d like to craft her a meaningful gift, which makes the most of my skillset as an evil scientist: a unicorn. Would this be overkill on a first date? And if not, could you suggest how I can create a unicorn in time for my date?

Yours,

A starry-eyed villain

This month, the Evil Engineer breaks some bad news to a villain who wants to live out their retirement like El Dorado.

Dear Evil Engineer,

After a long and lucrative career in real estate, I am ready to put my wealth to good use. I would like to build myself a castle from gold, à la El Dorado. When I say gold, I should specify that I mean solid gold, not gold leaf. I didn’t spend 50 years exploiting my workers, squashing my competition beneath falling pianos, fibbing to regulators, and siphoning off my employees’ pension to live out my retirement like a poseur in a shiny concrete chateau.

I am conveniently very rich, so money is no object. However, there may be technical impediments that I should take into account. To what extent will the tedious laws of nature force me to compromise on my dream retirement project?

Yours,

No relation to other noteworthy gold-loving villains

A directed-energy weapon could deter dawdling tourists, but your energy would be better spent throwing stuff.

Dear Evil Engineer,

Five years ago, I hung up the white cat and retired to a pleasant village in the Cotswolds. Unfortunately, this village has been flung to unwanted prominence as the location used for filming a hit period drama series.

Life has gone from perfect tranquillity to being disrupted daily by the arrival of half a dozen buses which dump tourists to trample about, posing for photos in front of our homes.

Always having struggled with confrontation, I’m looking for a way to get rid of tourists from outside my cottage without having to tell them to leave (putting out a sign and chaining a Nile crocodile outside my front door has only made my home more of a photo opportunity).

Ideally, I’d like to be able to shoot them from my bedroom window, but using microwave weapons rather than bullets, so as not to leave incriminating shrapnel in the bodies. Could you advise me as to how to proceed?

Yours,

A retired and retiring villain

This month’s correspondent is determined not to return to the office, even if that necessitates using hundreds of gulls to burn it to the ground.

Dear Evil Engineer,

If I were in senior management, I’d insist office-based working is essential for employee productivity and company culture. However, I am not, and I refuse to tolerate the proposed return to the office after 18 comfortable months of working from home. I hate the anonymous openplan office; I hate the commute; and most of all I hate the mob of aggressive gulls that descends on anyone walking back to the building at lunch with a meal deal.

I plan to kill two birds with one stone; the two birds being the return to the office and the gull mob, and the stone being an incendiary seagull bomb. Is it possible to weaponise the flock of gulls to take out the office building?

Yours,
An ornithophobic villain

This episode, a lonesome correspondent seeks advice on how to force the rest of the world to join them in the dark.

Dear Evil Engineer,

I am a creature of darkness, by which I mean that I am nocturnal. I suffer from extraordinary light sensitivity, which forces me to restrict my waking hours to between dusk and dawn. This is of great inconvenience to me, particularly in summer. I resent being unsynchronised with the rest of the world. I live in a town in East Europe and its nightlife scene consists of some kebab shops, the second-nicest gym in town, and a golf-themed bar. Diurnal normativity has caused silent suffering for my kind for many centuries.

The rest of the world must be forced to experience this life of darkness. Could you tell me how to put a big pair of sunglasses on the Earth, so the sun no longer shines on the world?

Yours,
A vampire

Exploding skulls are beyond the realm of practical possibility, but there is plenty of mischief to be done through the medium of sound.

Dear Evil Engineer,

On account of a particularly contrived origin story involving a marching band, an unrequited love and traumatic public humiliation, I emerged as a villain who commits crimes using music. I have made a lucrative career, taking contracts to provide loud, aggravating, looped music for enhanced interrogation operations.

I’m interested in diversifying my business; playing songs from children’s television at captives until they beg for mercy lost its novelty long ago. Could you suggest any ways of causing physical – rather than just psychological – injury through the audio medium?

Yours,
A musical villain

The Evil Engineer weighs up the environmental credentials of carnivorous domestic heating systems.

Dear Evil Engineer,

I am frustrated by the lack of leadership on climate action, particularly regarding low-hanging fruit such as boosting the energy efficiency of housing stock. I ask myself: what can I do to prevent the Earth becoming uninhabitable through climate change?

Before anyone makes any snide comments; it goes without saying that I want the Earth to become a hostile wasteland scattered with the remnants of the humanity. But I want to do it myself and not let the fossil fuel industry claim the greatest honour in villainy since someone threw a meteorite at Mexico 66 million years ago. I want to be evil and green, like the Grinch before his heart grew three sizes.

This leads me to my query: I have two fearsome pet leopards and I was already considering buying more. How many would I need if I wanted to heat my pleasant two-bed semi entirely with leopards?

Yours,
A conscientious villain