Skip to main content

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more