Mad scientists got their big start with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) though the wicked or foolish creator can be found in myth and legend. The big difference with Shelley was the science component. This wasn’t magic, like that which the sorcerer’s apprentice acquires, getting too big for his britches. Science is supposed to give us logical control devoid of emotion and human foibles. Don’t you believe it. Mad scientists are “mad” after all. Hubris knows no distinction when it comes time for karmic retribution.
W. Warren Wagar in “The Mad Bad Scientist: Haynes’s From Faust to Strangelove” (1994), Science Fiction Studies #65 (March 1995) tell us of Rosalyn D. Haynes’ criteria for crazy doctors and that all those gents aren’t the same:
But there are other stereotypes with long pedigrees. [Rosalyn D.] Haynes cites five: the stupid asocial virtuoso; the unfeeling scientist, devoid of affect or affection; the scientist who loses control of his (seldom her) experiments and two generally positive images, the scientist as heroic adventurer and the scientist as idealist or world-savior. She introduces us to examples of each in her next six chapters, which follow the theme of the scientist in literature from Bacon to Mary Shelley. Except for a section on treatment of the subject in German romanticism, virtually all of her references for the early modern period are to British scientists and writers.
The Haynes Mad Scientist Scale:
Type A: the stupid asocial virtuoso
Type B: the unfeeling scientist, devoid of affect or affection
Type C: the scientist who loses control of his (seldom her) experiments
Type D: the scientist as heroic adventurer
Type E: the scientist as idealist or world-savior
Victor Frankenstein is without doubt the most famous “mad scientist” in literature, though not the first. Shakespeare’s Prospero and Marlowe’s Faust both predate Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein is A, B and C on the Haynes Scale.
After Frankenstein, the scientists of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells figure large in SF history. Verne’s scientist/explorers such Captain Nemo and Robur the Conqueror blend type A and D. I wouldn’t class them as B, unemotional, since both operate from an emotional center.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger is ADE. (This also works for the Doctor on Doctor Who. The asocial varies with each actor. Colin Baker’s wonderfully snarky Doctor is the most ADE.)
Wells’s Doctor Moreau is closer to Frankenstein being ABC as well. His Dr. Cavor is more Vernian with AD.
The Pulps that followed these great SF novels gave us multiple examples in all categories.
Inventors of Destruction
The pages of Ray Palmer’s Amazing Stories, Oscar J. Friend’s Startling Stories, all followed that granddaddy of them all, Farnsworth Wright’s Weird Tales and brimmed brim with crazy inventors who either by accident or intent set a terror loose in the world. Even the Shudder Pulps used the figure of the demented doctors bent on torturing nekkid gurls with fake robots and cruel inventions got in on the action.
Heroic Scientists
Doc Savage is hardly perceived as “mad” but he is fantastic. Each novel some schmuck has to talk about how fascinating and unusual Doc is. This almost rates as mad. Doc is B, D and E. I include B because Doc never uses his scientific knowledge for personal gain. He is detached to the degree where Princess Monja’s charms have no effect on him. He remains a solitary monk emotionally, using his gifts to better humankind.
And there are others who followed in Doc’s mold: Curt Newton of Captain Future by Edmond Hamilton. Curt is a wise kind, super-adventurer of the future. Ed used heroic scientists in a few stories like “Across Space” and “The Hidden World” but gave us less likable mad scientists in stories like “Evolution Island”, “Locked Worlds”, “The Plant Revolt” and “The Man Who Evolved”.
Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore wrote one of the more fun scientists in the Hogben stories. Here the scientist gets drunk and creates amazing things, but can’t remember what he has invented when he sobers up. This is an example of C but without malice. The intent is humorous rather than a bloody rampage.
Conclusion
Of course, you can write this all off as Pulp hyperbole. Modern day SF writers wouldn’t do any such thing, right? Dr. Noonian Soong from the Star Trek franchise might have something to say about that. In classic style, ABC, he flees civilization to create an androids in secret. We get Data, Lorn and B4 out of it, but Soong is not a nice guy.
In fact, in Hollywood scientists are almost exclusively portrayed scientists as whack jobs. Think Jurassic Park, Iron Man 3, Kevin Bacon in The Hollow Man, Val Kilmer in The Thaw, and on and on…. The trope is that science and technology are too dangerous for mere mortals. So nothing has changed since Mary Shelley. And be fair. If nothing went wrong, it wouldn’t be much fun to read. At least now we have a scientific method for categorizing mad scientists. How can that go wrong?
