I’d nominate Stephen Maturin (Esteban Maturin y Domanova) from the Aubrey-Maturin series. Physician, Surgeon, Musician, Ornithologist, Entemologist, fluently multi-lingual, crack shot, swordsman, intelligence agent. Plays Xanatos Speed Chess with Napolean’s best.
But after twenty books, he still can’t tell the difference between a stay, sheet, line, or halyard; a mast or a yard. Or board a ship without a very real possibility of a dunking. Get’s starboard/larboard right about 1/2 the time. So that might count against him.
All the more believeable due to his occasional fallability (the Ledward/Wray affair, an occasional addiction to laudanum).
Going back a ways, in the “Lensman” series of books, the Arisians were so damn smart that they could accurately predict the future, in great detail. For example, as a minor demonstration, an Arisian told the hero of one of the books that in several years, he would be in a certain barber shop in Spokane, and the barber would nick him at a certain place on his face. And it happened.
But most of the book was about space battles and the fate of two galaxies.
After reading through the replies, I see someone already mentioned the Arisians, and someone else said that omniscience is not intelligence.
But the Arisians were not omniscient in the sense of it being an ability they had. They were just so tremendously smart that they could deduce the future from a limited series of facts. They believed that a truly competent mind could deduce the entire past, present, and future of the universe from a single fact or artifact.
I think young John Kaltenbrunner of Lord of the Barnyard (by the late Tristan Egolf) is one of the more intelligent and certainly creative, protagonists I’ve seen in a long time in fiction. Seems like I’m the only person who is aware of this amazing novel, so I’d be interested to know if any other Dopers have read it.
I think the Doctor wins the thread, but a highly intelligent character in a recent movie is Dr. Ally Hextall in the movie Contagion, as played by Jennifer Ehle*. Just hearing her speak is a wonder. Of course, I don’t know how accurate her science was but it sure sounded good. (and Ally as opposed to Dr. Erin Mears, Kate Winslet’s character, who seems smart but does an incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid thing at one point in the film that had to have gotten a lot of people killed).
*I’m hoping Ehle gets an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, she’s that good at playing the genius researcher.
What about Odysseus? He has a ton of flaws but his cunning is well known (I mean c’mon, naming himself “Nobody” so the person’ll say, “Nobody’s attacking me.” That’s brilliant)
Hopefully I don’t need to put a spoiler tag on that…
I’ll nominate John, the Savage from Huxley’s Brave New World. Brought up in a reservation outside of the World state, he manages to glean enough from Shakespeare to be able to hold his own in a philosophical discussion with the enigmatatic Mustapha Mond. His intelligence doesn’t avail him much but his choices make a weird sort of logic in my opinion.
Francis Urqhart, the man who schemes his way to the Prime Minister’s office in “House of Cards.” Urqhart has frequent asides to the audience, explaining his thought process and how his schemes are meant to work - and characters reacting in reasonably realistic ways respond as Urqhart predicts. We get to see a mind at work making decisions that make sense given the circumstances and pay off in believable ways. Urqhart never says “I’m very smart” - but he never has to.
Shakespeare’s Richard III, as the chief inspiration for Urqhart, would be another contender for the same reasons.
Having read this, I will second this nomination. (I was going to nominate Havelock Vetinari, who is impressive enough in his own right and sustains it over multiple novels, but that there is a very effective depiction of a higher intelligence.) Although I’d argue that
the opponent isn’t actually smarter, he just has a head start. In fact, it’s a flaw in the story - the lead character really should have realized he was screwed the instant that the other character contacted him first, and should have surrendered unconditionally - after all, if I could think that through, he should have been able to as well.
Vetinari displays an extremely wide range of intelligence,though, including
Realising that the other bigwigs wanted him out and engineering a book-long scenario in which he was ousted and then returned, all controlled remotely by him, having predicted his opponents’ movements 100 moves ahead of them.
We do have a few stories of Holmes’ deductions going wrong, though. For instance, he was completely off in “The Yellow Face”, though he didn’t mind especially since it still ended up as a happy ending (and he asked Watson to remind him of that case, any time he started getting too cocky). And, of course, he was famously outwitted by Irene Alder in “A Scandal in Bohemia”.
This display of European-chauvinism both shocks and sickens me, sir; it is sufficiently ignorant to be worthy of an Etruscan. Tarzan’s first spoken language was mangani.
And before you embarrass yourself by protesting that the mangani were just gorillas and had no language, I remind you that when Tarzan was captured by the unquestionably human La of Opar, that was the language she spoke to him in, and it was clear that the Oparians had interbred with the ape-men, killing any male who seemed too “human” and any female who seemed too ape-like. The mangani were obviously closer to humans genetically than either is to gorilas or even chimps.
Not to deny that Irene Adler was a great big brain – she clearly was – but Holmes’ heart was never in that case. He didn’t like the client from the get-go, and when he realized that he was essentially on the wrong side, he was annoyed by not surprised. Did he even take the fee? I honestly don’t recall.
Holmes’ usual M. O. was to pursue the case wholeheartedly regardless, and to milk the clients he didn’t like (who were generally aristocracy of some flavor or another) for all they were worth. He did waive fees regularly, but only when working for those who couldn’t afford it (which he did frequently).
“My professional charges are upon a fixed scale,” said Holmes
coldly. “I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.”
The Problem of Thor Bridge