Reading a bit of Clancy-esque tripe right now, in which a scientist develops a way to use radio waves to drive people insane, and, of course, uses it. The author is following in a long tradition of grade “b” (and occasionally grade “a”) entertainment, but where did the idea arise from (besides Shelley’s Frankenstein)?
Has there ever been a real-life “mad scientist”? I assume no one’s tried to take over the world, but any extortion attempts or the like using a Doomsday invention of some kind? Or even some famous scientist that just went nuts?
Which of the traditional mad scientist scenarios, such as weather machine, death ray, mind control, etc., is most likely to become reality? (I acknowledge that biowar is the most likely IRL, but it really doesn’t fit into the traditional scenarios - biowar, at least right now, is too uncontrollable to be used for extortion or world domination.)
Well, Nicholas Tesla comes to mind: crazy as an outhouse rat, but not bent on evildoing or world domination.
The sad fact is that when you mix the modest amount of evil in the average person with the humble level of genius required to earn a university chemistry degree, you can get horrific results if there’s a buck to be made and a patriotic justification.
Specificaly, I remember in Frank Zappa’s biography where his father helped developed chemical warfare agents that had nauseating, disorenting properties that could penetrate protective suits, so that the victim would remove the suit and be killed by the agents that could not penetrate the suit. Zappa simply marveled that people get paid for dreaming up this sort of thing. I do too.
He was a mathemetician astronomer who was very vain about his looks and his dueling skills. He fought in a duel over some woman and his nose was chopped off. He had a blacksmith make him a new one from bronze. After the nose didn’t go over very well in society he spent a LONG time holed up in a tower proving what a great mathemetician he was. He actually went through an amazing amount of old records and discovered several important things about our solar system, refining statistical analysis along the way. When he emerged with his discoveries he expected to be praised and celebrated and uh, ummmm… laid? But the ladies still thought he was creepy.
So, I think if he had had the power to hold the world hostage he would have, but his discoveries were not violent enough. Still he was certainly mad. And a scientist. And capable of gruesome stuff.
Many of the astronomer types were of questionable sanity. They were frequently very egotistical. They stayed up all night a lot and spent unending hours either recording or analysing rows and rows of numbers often proving nothing at all. They made up all kinds of bizarre theories about space and then when ridiculed they holed up with rich eccentric friends who would feed them and let them stay in a tower room with nothing but a paper pencils and a telescope. Imagine what the village children thought of these guys.
Part II. I think a mad scientist would not be too concerned about uncontrollable. Neither would a mad dictator.
He was a mathemetician astronomer who was very vain about his looks and his dueling skills. He fought in a duel over some woman and his nose was chopped off. He had a blacksmith make him a new one from bronze. After the nose didn’t go over very well in society he spent a LONG time holed up in a tower proving what a great mathemetician he was. He actually went through an amazing amount of old records and discovered several important things about our solar system, refining statistical analysis along the way. When he emerged with his discoveries he expected to be praised and celebrated and uh, ummmm… laid? But the ladies still thought he was creepy.
So, I think if he had had the power to hold the world hostage he would have, but his discoveries were not violent enough. Still he was certainly mad. And a scientist. And capable of gruesome stuff.
Many of the astronomer types were of questionable sanity. They were frequently very egotistical. They stayed up all night a lot and spent unending hours either recording or analysing rows and rows of numbers often proving nothing at all. They made up all kinds of bizarre theories about space and then when ridiculed they holed up with rich eccentric friends who would feed them and let them stay in a tower room with nothing but a paper pencils and a telescope. Imagine what the village children thought of these guys.
Part II. I think a mad scientist would not be too concerned about uncontrollable. Neither would a mad dictator.
Ì never thought the character of Victor Frankenstein as being mad, like the classic mad scientist. I think that image comes from the movies rather than books.
Shelly’s Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus is more a critique on the rationalist movement and a warning to understand the consequences of one’s actions rather than the classic mad scientist.
Point taken, Freyr. However, I would still say that Frankenstein was a precursor to the James Bondian mad scientist/evil genius. The nuances were probably lost along the way.
Slithy, I wasn’t originally thinking of military scientists - when I think about it more, I was looking for the evil genius model - an independent actor. But since you’ve brought it up, any military scientists who could fit the bill?
As for Tycho and Tesla, excellent examples. Any ideas whether either of these people were models for any fictional mad scientists?
There are some who would put Teller on that list for publicly pushing for development of the H-Bomb, but frankly I think that his sanity is not in question in light of what we now know the Soviets were up to (the same thing).
Teller was the inspiration for Peter Sellers’ Dr. Strangelove.
I can think of only absolute top-ranked scientific genius who was also a clinical psychotic, Harry Cavendish. (Tesla was eccentric, but not completely nuts)
Cavendish was probably the greatest-ever experimentalist in the field of electricity, but he never published any of his results. As a result, it was at least 50 years before other people duplicated his findings. He also did a lot of work in chemistry. Highlights include the discovery of hydogen, argon, and the composition of water and nitric acid. Again, due to his secrecy, other people later repeated his work (and got the credit). He also did groundbreaking work in physics. He was the first to measure the gravitational constant, and hence the mass and density of the Earth.
However, he was terrified of talking to or even seeing other people. He communicated with his female servants by notes, and if he saw one she was fired on the spot.
Thanks for the posts, and thankee for the link, Sofa King. As it’s been a year, I feel no shame for not finding it afore I posted.
Between the scientists named here and in the other thread, I think we have a good grounding in kooky scientists. I propose we shift the focus of this thread to the technology involved.
How feasible are weather machines, death rays, etc.? How long before a Dr. No for the 21st Century holds us ransom for one meeellion, er, beeellion dollars? And finally, which doomsday device is the coolest?
Going on SuaSponte’s new track here’s my take on fearsome/diabolical machines.
Death Ray = Laser. Ok…to make a laser a worthwhile death ray you’d need a small powerplant to power it but that’s just details.
Weather Machines: Forget it. The enrgy required would be stupendous. IIRC your typical hurricane packs more power than several hundred H-Bombs. Easier to just lob the bomb in the first place and be done with it.
Coolest Doomsday device? Well, I don’t know what the device was but in the movie The Quiet Earth scientists (inadvertently) unleash something that destroys ALL life on earth above the plant level. POOF…vanished…just plain gone in an instant. The only people who survived were those literally on the brink of death when the ‘effect’ happened. The main character of the movie is a scientitst who worked at the lab doing the experiment but decided to kill himself for some reason (I don’t recall why he wanted to commit suicide but it wasn’t because he knew if he did so he’d really survive…he actually wanted to die and was foiled in his attempt).
Of course, let’s not forget those scientists who are/were crazy in a good way, either. There’s no way that Murray Gell-Mann (who named subatomic particles after the sound a seagull makes in James Joyce books), for instance, or Paul Dirac (who based a theory of gravity on the fact that 1 is approximately equal to two thousand), was completely compos mentes, but they managed to bring physics forward in great leaps and bounds.
As for doomsday machines, you just can’t beat a black hole. The only use in fiction of a black hole to destroy a planet that I know of was Niven’s “The Hole Man” (and we now know that that one wouldn’t have worked), but it really should be used more often.
That’s a slight misrepresentation of how the quark got named. Gell-Mann wanted to coin an entirely new word for the name of the new particle they had “discovered” rather than derive it from a Greek word as subatomic particles are usually named. He came up with the pronunciation but was unsure how to spell it. Running across the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark” in Finnegans Wake decided it for him (the fact that there are 3 quarks in a baryon was influential, too).
BTW, it’s often pronounced “wrong”. He meant the vowel to be that of quart not that of mark.
But I agree with your general premise about Gell-Mann’s mental condition. Anyone who likes Finnegans Wake can’t be entirely normal.
How could I forget the History Eraser Button from the Ren and Stimpy show?!
According to Ren, “It could be good, it could be bad! We just don’t know!”
That’s gotta be better than a Black Hole which is merely the end of history for anyone unfortunate enough to jump into one.
Also, don’t forget the evil (can’t remember his name) from Letterman of the Electric Company (you know…stronger than a silent E, faster than a rolling O, able to leap capital T’s in a single bound…it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s LETTERMAN!). The bad guy in that merely had to add or remove letters from words and phrases to make all sorts of nasty things happen. Talk about ultimate power! He could turn the gun you had pointed at him into gin and then drink it! (Although I’m reasonably certain that particular track was never explored on the Electric Company.)
