The Mad Scientist

 

“And by the way it’s not about making money, it’s about taking money. Destroying the status quo because the status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.” – Dr. Horrible, from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

The mad scientist is one of the classical literary tropes of science fiction. But wait a minute. What’s a trope? I know there are some out there who have heard the term but are too embarrassed to ask what it is. A trope is a literary device or motifs, something that is used over and over. It can be a figure of speech, an iconic character, a cliché.  In a mystery it can be the detective with personal problems. In a Jane Austin novel, it could be the young woman who is too smart for her own good. And In science fiction, we have the mad scientist.

“My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance, but then a restless, and almost frantic impulse urged me forward. I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.” – Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein.

One of the earliest books that can truly be called science fiction is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein seems to be the archetype of the mad scientist, and yet, despite his hubris and his flaws I would be hard pressed to call him mad. H. G. Wells gave us some true-blue mad scientists. In the Island of Dr. Moreau, the mad doctor conducts horrific experiments on animals and humans without any scruples. He has lost all sense of morality and empathy. He is evil. Another Wells novel the Invisible Man has a scientist who treats himself with chemicals to make himself invisible. But the chemicals eat away at his sanity and he goes on a killing spree.

The Wells novels are from the late 1890’s. Frankenstein is from 1818. The origins of the Mad scientist may be even earlier with Christopher Marlow’s book, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus from 1607.  One, or all of them must have touched off a nerve to make the mad scientist a stock character in science fiction novels, comic books, James Bond, and lots of B movies.

 Mad scientists are not necessarily evil. Take Dr. Walter Bishop in the TV show Fringe. Yes, he is a few sticks short of a bundle, but he is also charming and funny in a (mostly) nonthreatening way. The main character in The Absent Minded Professor is loveable and, if not mad, is certainly eccentric. The Disney film was based on a short story by Samuel W. Taylor and his main character was purportedly based on a real professor at Princeton (whose nickname was Dr. Boom. Doesn’t that make your imagination work overtime).

Over the years, lots of writers and film makers have employed the mad scientist character as the focal point of conflict in their stories. One can only imagine that they are fun to create and develop. I myself have never written a mad scientist, though I have written sociopathic villains. That brings up a good point. Sociopaths, psychopaths, people with narcissistic personality disorder; these are all people with real mental health issues. We live in an age where people are recognizing that mental health issues should be dealt with seriously. And we need to avoid stereotyping mental health the same way we need to avoid stereotyping racial identities. But science fiction is fiction, and fiction has to have conflict, and often that conflict needs to be supplied by a “bad” person. Anyone who is bad, probably fits somewhere on the mental health spectrum (as do we all). So, I am okay with the use of the mad scientist as long as he is not being made fun of for real health issues and as long as the author is not equating mental health issues with evil. After all, we all have our own demons.

Star Liner