From Prometheus to Dr. Faustus, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Griffin, Dr. West, or Dr. Banner, mad scientists in literature have one thing common: they all challenge some sort of law. In one way or another, they “practise more than heavenly power permits,” as the chorus in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faust says in its final admonition. Not only do they break the rules of established paradigms—their methods are never recognized as proper science by academic institutions—but, more importantly, they defy the very laws of nature. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through,” says Victor Frankenstein. By redefining life, matter, and even space-time, the greatest mad minds defy the basic concepts on which we build our sense of reality. The rejection of the world everyone sees in favor of an alternate reality nobody else can perceive is both one of the most commonplace descriptions of madness, and a prerequisite for scientific breakthrough. And, precisely because the work of these mad scientists is so groundbreaking, there is seldom legislation in place to address the ethical issues that may arise. Mad scientists operate in a legal limbo, when they are not overtly breaking criminal laws. World-domination, as anyone who has watched an episode of Pinky and The Brain knows, can be their main drive. In short, mad scientists violate institutional protocols, twist what we thought was the unbendable order of nature, or contravene, in super-villainous ways, the rule of law.
My father gave me my first job, reading audiobooks on cassette tape. He had caught on to the medium early, but, as he explained later, “There were lots of choices as long as you only wanted to hear ‘The Thorn Birds.’ ” So, one day, in 1987, he presented me with a handheld cassette recorder, a block of blank tapes, and a hardcover copy of “Watchers,” by Dean Koontz, offering nine dollars per finished sixty-minute tape of narration.
This was an optimistic plan on my father’s part. Not only was I just ten years old, but when it came to reading aloud I had an infamous track record.
Fifty years on from the first publication of Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey’s classic account of his time as a ranger in Utah’s Arches national park, the desert still represents freedoms unavailable elsewhere. Abbey could evoke the raw, alarming beauty of arid landscapes as effectively as any writer, but he was also capable of startling cruelty and obtuseness, particularly towards immigrants. In a 1977 essay titled The Great American Desert he at once extols the desert’s appeal and discourages those who would follow him there. “Survival hint #1: Stay out of there. Don’t go. Stay home and read a good book, this one for example.” As well as the bloodsucking kissing bug and a half-dozen species of rattlesnake, there are black widows, Gila monsters, the deadly poisonous coral snakes and the giant, hairy desert scorpions. “Something about the desert,” he adds, “inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity.”