They Called Me Mad!
Mad Science and Mad Scientists in Fact and Fiction
Written by Dave Bryant from notes compiled by Baron Engel
They have been as indispensible as intrepid heroes and arrogant villains to cautionary tales and adventure stories since the early nineteenth century. Their iconic stature is beyond doubt—but who are they, really? Where did they come from? How and why have they achieved such stature in popular storytelling?
As with many other character archetypes, mad scientists arose out of historical figures and events as well as from literate or lurid narratives. Often they reflect the anxieties and morés of their times, but the most enduring speak vividly and viscerally to fears and passions that run throughout human history. They can be distinct and individual, yet because of that iconic, archetypical quality, they also tend to share traits and outlooks that identify them immediately to a Western and indeed, increasingly, world audience.
Even as a child they laughed at me!
Archimedes may be the seed from which so many characters have sprung. Perhaps the most brilliant mathematician and scientist before Sir Isaac Newton, he is best known today for discovering the principles of density and bouyancy while settling into a too-full bath, then running naked through the streets shouting “Eureka!”, meaning “I have found it!”
By all accounts, he was multitalented, as willing to tinker with mechanical devices such as the Archimedes screw as to ponder mathematical puzzles, possibly even inventing a form of integral calculus centuries before Newton. What makes this unusual is that many if not most other ancient Greek philosphers regarded actual experimentation as a rough and crude activity compared with the lofty intellectualism of pure thought. He apparently also could concentrate with single-minded focus on the task at hand. Legend has it that he was killed by a Roman soldier while crouched over equations scratched in sand; his last words are reputed to translate approximately as “don’t disturb my circles!”
The next likely ancestors to the modern mad scientist are the alchemists that dominated inquiry into the physical world and its processes from the ancient world into the Renaissance. While today they are remembered chiefly as charlatans or con men, it is important to keep in mind that many of them were sincerely doing their best to uncover how the universe worked—from scratch, without any preceding work to assist them. Certainly there usually was a strong spiritual or mystical aspect to their efforts, but this was an age when few people approached matters in any other way. They are the precursors of all scientists, and it is worth noting that the popular image of scientists in general is but a hair’s breadth from the stereotype of the mad scientist.
Alchemy waned as the modern world dawned—indeed, this transition helps to define that dawn. Largely discredited but still holding some power over the imagination, it was a natural plot device for Mary Shelley to use as the basis for the schemes of the first great mad scientist character, Doctor Victor Frankenstein, in a novel that today could be regarded as horror, science fiction, or both. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818, established many of the plot and character elements so common to modern mad scientists.
Doctor Moreau and Doctor Jekyll, coming later in the century, are equally household names. While Frankenstein created a single complex, ambivalent monster (in the original sense of the word), Moreau tampered with animals, anthropomorphizing them surgically, and Jekyll experimented on himself in their exploration of psychology—a new and uncharted wilderness at the time. This, then, can be seen as the early form of the archetype, the gentleman scientist gone wrong.
The tumult of the twentieth century refined the mad scientist into the image we see today. The “wizard war” of the Second World War reshaped the relationship between science and society, particularly in military and political affairs, and the Cold War cemented that relationship in place. Science was no longer the province of ivory-tower researchers, isolated from the grim, practical necessities of warfare or the shifting, often murky currents of politics; instead, it often took center stage in either or both, sometimes to the detriment of all. It is against this backdrop that the modern mad scientist operates, often on a grand scale.
I’ll show them all!
The characters that stand heir to this march of real and imagined figures embody a myriad of dualities, but nearly all share certain basic characteristics. They are men (rarely women) obsessed to the exclusion of all else with achieving singular goals, generally dangerously hubristic ones.
The nineteenth-century version expressed the fears of a society coming to grips with the Industrial Revolution and with the religious and intellectual foment of the era. Their hubris was smaller, more personal, exploring “things man was not meant to know” . . . or do. The mad scientists of this era exemplified the emerging conflict between old religion and new science, the sense that cold logic and a dismissal of the Almighty’s guiding hand would lead one into error and even sin, especially when trying to do good. Sometimes the conflict was over the definition of that good as much as over the means of reaching it.
The First World War swept away that vision as it demolished so much else. The old order and with it old certainties crumbled, replaced by exciting new possibilities if one was fortunate or by revolution or civil war if one was not. Science took on a new, faster tempo, becoming esoteric beyond the easy understanding of the layman; technology began to mechanize more and more of society. The Great Depression and, in the United States, Prohibition contributed their own stresses to a nervous time.
Pulp adventure became popular, pitting mysterious and powerful heroes against even more mysterious and powerful villains. Both used strange and dubious inventions to advance or thwart bold schemes on an ever-larger scale. It wasn’t enough any more for the forces of evil to manifest in the corruption of individuals; the Great War and the succeeding national or international catastrophes showed that large, impersonal forces moved in the world, looming ominously over the helpless populace. Some of those catastrophes resulted in régimes that fit these larger-than-life motifs perfectly, especially Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
The former pandered to a defeated nation’s need to bolster its self-esteem by promoting a “return to traditional values” and a mishmash of Teutonic and other central European pagan mysticism. At the same time, Germany’s scientific and technological establishments were some of the best in the world. The combination was bizarre and sometimes jarring—made to order for authors and moviemakers needing weird science wielded by sinister faceless militarists.
The latter was even more brutal and less sophisticated. During the Cold War, it set itself up as the great enemy of the West, all but explicitly stepping into the shoes of the storybook villain. Superb scientific thinking and engineering design combined with paranoia, incompetent construction and utility, and the triumph of ideology over good sense resulted in a seemingly monolithic but schizophrenic opponent—sometimes a dark lord of evil, sometimes the Keystone Kops. The amalgam of well-defined us-versus-them situation and split personality nature have provided generations of authors and filmmakers with an equally entertaining source of bad guys.
Death, the destroyer of worlds
The Second World War embroiled the industrial nations of the world in what all parties regarded as a war for the survival of their cherished ideals if not their very homes. For the first time, war was not simply an affair of the soldiers on the front lines or the sailors out at sea. It was everywhere, touching every facet of a nation . . . including academia. Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Neils Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Wernher von Braun are household names even today. A host of less well known but equally stellar intellects also populated the scientific firmament of the time, and many participated, willingly or not, in the urgent new “scientific war”.
The need for new and better war-fighting technology reached a fever pitch. Germany launched buzzbombs, ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, and other less successful but more ambitious projects. The United States invented ergonomics to improve industrial efficiency and utility of equipment. Cryptography and code-breaking were critical to the success of the Allied effort. Radar played a key role in winning the Battle of Britain and a smaller role in the Pacific War.
Overshadowing them all, though, is the Manhattan Project. Second only to the Cold War’s Apollo Program in scope, it raced to develop the atomic bomb before a similar program in Germany could do so. No such program existed—but the intelligence reports of the time were ambiguous, and the Allies felt it wiser to assume there was such a program. The Project was a success, bringing into human hands the ability to annihilate a city and most of its inhabitants at a single stroke with a fireball like the surface of the sun.
The Cold War of the following decades brought with it a terrifying new Sword of Damocles forged with single-minded intensity by physicists working on concepts and machinery unimaginable to most of the public. The arms race and the space race drove the proposal or development of outlandishly huge vehicles—many of them nuclear-powered—of land, sea, air, and even space. Following are just a few examples of these and other projects.
Project Pluto aimed to produce giant cruise missiles powered by nuclear ramjets, carrying loads of atomic warheads. Circling low over the Pacific Ocean after launch by booster rocket, they would then race to the Soviet Union to dispense their cargoes before flying up and down the landscape, spraying their radioactive exhaust, until they crashed. Static tests of the prototype power plant were carried out, but the project was abandoned when nobody could devise a safe way of testing the completed aircraft.
The US Navy wanted to build USS United States, a $190-million aircraft carrier carrying scores of forty-five-ton heavy bombers. It was canceled days after the keel was laid in April 1949; instead, existing fleet carriers were modernized and upgraded over the course of the 1950s.
The healthful benefits of small radiation doses would be brought to the public by detonating warheads high above US cities; the population would be drawn outdoors by festivals. This proposal, fortunately, was quickly scrapped.
The Soviets, too, entertained and even carried out equally strange programs, including fruitless inquiry into paranormal phenomena. Both sides conducted more conventional research that spawned weird rumors: the Philadelphia Experiment, flying saucers, alien contact, and other oddities. Little wonder, then, that the popular image of scientists in general, let alone the mad scientist obsessed with his private goals to the exclusion even of good grooming and hygiene, looks the way it does.
The world is not simply black and white!
Mad scientists would not capture the imagination so thoroughly were there not some variety to their characters. Already mentioned are the differences between the nineteenth-century gentleman scholar-researchers and the twentieth-century overly focused scientist-engineers. But there are other discernable divisions as well.
Apart from the fictional characters at the heart of this archetype, there are real historical figures that arguably could be classed as mad scientists, particularly Archimedes, many of the classical alchemists, and a number of the minds that dominated physics in the early and mid-twentieth century. Indeed, Albert Einstein’s rather untidy, avuncular appearance, more than any other, put an indelible stamp on the “look” of mad scientists.
Many if not most mad scientists are mavericks, breaking away from the establishment to pursue their schemes alone or with no more than a handful of assistants. Still, the “institutional” mad scientist is not unknown, working with or at the head of a whole team, often at the behest of a powerful government agency or master villain. One interesting quirk of both types is that they frequently command staggering resources far beyond reason, giving rise to the common audience cry of “how are they financing this?”
Some mad scientists are genuinely evil and usually come to satisfyingly bad ends. Others are merely misguided, “coming to their senses” at critical plot junctures and paying for their sins with their lives, sometimes voluntarily. Still others are at least nominally on the side of the good guys, borderline personalities regarded askance by their compatriots and separated from their sociopathic counterparts only by a vestigial sense of right and wrong.
Depending on his motives and actions and those of people or organizations that impinge on them, a mad scientist later may be regarded as despicable, his memory reviled—or he may be hailed as a genius, perhaps ironically if he initially had been rejected for his radical ideas.
There is one last important but oft-overlooked dichotomy. Science is the exploration of the physical world and its processes in an attempt to understand and codify them; it deals almost exclusively in data and information. Engineering is the application of science to technology in an effort to design and construct physical artifacts. Though the characters are universally called mad scientists, their skills and methods frequently are more those of engineers than of true scientists.
What is it you want, Doctor?
The hubris of the nineteenth century tended to revolve around improving mankind itself, which was seen as tampering with the Divine plan. In the twentieth century, the emphasis shifted to the perceived potential of runaway science or technology for wreaking physical destruction on an unprecedented scale. Still, time-honored human motivations play their part as well; the mad scientist may desire to achieve one or a combination of several common goals.
Destroying or at least laying waste to the world is popular, though in many stories one has to wonder what the mad scientist will get out of it—unless he’s a nihilist. Closely related is revenge upon society or specific members thereof for real or imagined slights, usually a failure to appreciate the mad scientist’s genius. He may work desperately to correct an injustice or tragedy, personal or societal. He may desire passionately to save the world or to make it better . . . for some value of “better”.
Often a single traumatic event catalyzes the mad scientist’s obsession with his chosen goals. It may come early, even in childhood, inspiring a grimly determined beeline toward a career that will place the character in a position to carry out his plan. It may occur later, after the character is established in life or job, deflecting him nto a new course.
But you can call me . . .
Here is a roll call of prominent and obscure mad scientists, real or imagined. It is by no means comprehensive, and the reader no doubt can suggest many more. Be advised: some descriptions contain minor plot spoilers.
Real Aside from Archimedes, various alchemists, and European physicists of the early twentieth century, there are other candidates. Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla, the latter backed by George Westinghouse, waged a bitter campaign over the course of electrification in the United States. Doktor Joseph Mengele conducted horrific medical experiments on concentration-camp inmates.
Novels Doctors Frankenstein, Moreau, and Jekyll have already been mentioned. Captain Nemo built and operated Nautilus, a name eerily appropriate when it was given to the first nuclear submarine of the US Navy. The title character of the James Bond novel Dr. No is perhaps one of the best-known villains of that series. Peter Anspach’s Web page on “The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord” is a trenchant and very funny commentary on genré clichés in novels and other media, many of them having to do with mad scientists.
Movies Perhaps the quintessential source of such characters in the twentieth century, moviemakers almost single-handedly created what most people today think of when they hear the term “mad scientist”. The original, of course, is Doktor Rotwang of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Doctor Emmett Brown of Back to the Future and Doctor Strangelove of Stanley Kubrik’s eponymous film are clearly conscious homages. Doctor Brackish Okun of Independence Day is likewise of similar appearance, though less malevolent. Doktor Totenkopf of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a rare case: his scheme continues even after his death. Frank N. Furter of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a rather different take on the archetype.
Television Mad scientists populate serious and silly programs alike. Doctor Gaius Baltar, of the remade Battlestar Galactica, is an ambivalent, tormented figure. Doctor Bunsen Honeydew of The Muppet Show deliberately or inadvertently subjects his lab assistant, Beaker, to a range of hilarious and unfortunate experiments.
Animation Both Western animation and Japanese animé feature mad scientists. The scientists at the root of the plot in Giant Robo attempt to bring a new, inexhaustible energy source to the world, with ruinous and unexpected results. The government team behind the psychic youths in Akira succeed all too well at fulfilling their mandate. Many of the alchemist characters in Fullmetal Alchemist can be viewed as mad scientists—in particular Doctor Shou Tucker. James Lloyd Steam and James Edward Steam of Steamboy have very different visions for their greatest invention. Syndrome of The Incredibles hearkens to the classic villains not only of comics but of the James Bond movies of the sixties and seventies, and is genuinely dangerous despite the story’s generally comedic tone. The “Pinky and the Brain” segments of Animaniacs satirize many of the mad scientist’s characteristics. Professor Membrane of Invader Zim, in a humorous turn-about, refuses to believe his son’s assertions of alien invasion. Professor Richard Impossible of The Venture Brothers is one of a host of semicompetent mad scientists faced by the Ventures.
Comics A particularly fertile ground, comics have produced more than their share of mad scientists. Dr. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four and his nemesis, Dr. Victor von Doom, are perhaps the best-known. The entire premise and much of the cast of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius revolve around mad science and mad scientists.
Are we not men?
Anthropomorphic characters and mad scientists—indeed, scientists in general—are a natural pairing in a variety of ways. Again, the following is not exhaustive, and the reader is encouraged to think of other possibilities.
One of the most obvious links is the creation of anthropomorphic creatures in an otherwise human world, as featured in The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells or Forests of the Night and Spectres of the Dawn by S. Andrew Swann. It is a favorite premise of creators in the furry community as well.
Moreau’s motivation was to create the perfect people for a Utopian society, a very Victorian spin for a very Victorian cautionary tale. One can hope that, if chimerae or other created life comes into existence in the future, the impact of Wells’s story on society may help prevent the worst abuses of that created life.
A century later, one of the most common reasons (both within and outside the furry community) given for such creations is the search for the perfect soldier. The ironic aspect of this premise is its impracticality from both economic and military points of view—but then one of the hallmarks of mad scientists is that they often wave away such criticisms, sublimely convinced that their vision will succeed where others have failed.
Another popular theme among creators in the furry community is the generation of anthropomorphic life forms to serve as sexual partners. It has resulted in some of the best and some of the worst the community’s creators have to offer, ranging from serious explorations of the psychosexual and societal ramifications to simple sexual fantasies. Tellingly, this idea is rarely touched on in mainstream science fiction, and usually is treated gingerly or squeamishly when it does appear.
The so-called “posthuman” future proposed by some writers and visionaries assumes science and technology so advanced they render even the human body plastic and protean. In such a milieu, where people can reshape themselves into whatever forms they desire, anthropomorphic templates may well be popular. The ability of a mad scientist in such a world to wreak havoc is little short of mind-boggling. Of course, as with many other concepts in science fiction, there are detractors who claim such capabilities are effectively physically impossible—but one can answer that argument with Clarke’s First Law: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
In a world where humans are uncommon or nonexistent and most or all of the characters are anthropomorphic, the most important distinction is genré. More specifically, the question is whether the setting is furry as a matter of convenience or artistic device, or whether it is a serious attempt at an alien or partially alien world.
In the former case, as with a comedic graphic story or a serious story using the “iconic” approach to humans-as-furry-characters, there is little alteration to the mad scientist or, for that matter, any other stock character. The creator can simply proceed with all the stereotypical appearance and behavior essentially intact, perhaps making the occasional nod for effect to the anthropomorphic nature of the background or people.
In the latter case, stock characters in general might be called into question, depending on how alien the world is. What drives such characters is the fact that human psychology lends itself to those archetypes; if the characters are significantly different in nature, their archetypes may be radically different. Even among human cultures throughout history, ideas about stock characters have varied widely.
There is a middle ground of sorts as well: worlds that are furry, but where possible hew fairly closely to real history, departing from it only as dictated by physical differences. For example, if mice are only a few inches tall, they likely would be the first aviators, perhaps around the time of the Civil War in the United States, and would tend to dominate such industries as gemcutting and watchmaking. There, stock characters like the mad scientist would work well, but might vary in detail.
In the last case, or in a more conventional fantasy world, magic might be currently extant or part of the historical record. Mad scientists are close cousins to the mad wizards of fantasy; they occupy much the same niche in their respective genrés. If the magic is faded or gone, mad scientists may seek to revive it. If it coexists with technology, literally almost anything is possible. If it is dominant, but technology is beginning to make headway—as in the High Middle Ages—wizards might seek to add it to their repertoire. Engineers might try to reproduce magical effects, either to hoodwink the gullible or counter an opponent.
Conclusion
No short essay like this can more than scratch the surface of the considerations involved in detailing vivid, believable characters. The hope is, however, that it will stimulate the reader’s imagination by asking questions, pointing out possibilities, and leading the reader into asking—and answering—still more questions.
As with any topic the world-builder, author, or artist must address, nothing beats good research for answering such questions. Even for cultures not based on historical templates, it helps to understand what is possible or likely for a given level of technology or physical environment.
Go to top of page
Go to . . .
This Web site and its content
copyright 2006 Dave Bryant except where otherwise noted. |
Some design elements on this Web site may render awkwardly if font sizes are changed in browser preferences or if viewed through Internet Explorer, because of its cavalier treatment of HTML and CSS standards; Safari or Mozilla-Firefox are recommended.
|