As ‘the genius’ ranks amongst fiction’s favorite archetypes, there are no shortage of personalities to choose in formulating a list. Below are ten more characters of preternatural insight and mental dexterity. This list, of course, follows on from the first, which you can read here. 10 Professor Moriarty The Sherlock Holmes stories  The nemesis of super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty is a criminal mastermind who controls and manipulates all the malefactors in England like pawns. He only plays a small part in the original canon of Arthur Conan Doyle, but later re-imaginings have expanded his role. He is described as a mathematical genius, authoring such enlightening works as “A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem” and “The Dynamics of an Asteroid”, but he is ill suited to the boredom of academic life, and turns to misdeeds. Holmes calls him “the Napoleon of Crime”. The character was originally intended to kill off Sherlock; at the end of the story “The Final Problem” Holmes and Moriarty plunge off a waterfall to their deaths. However, intense public outcries and financial issues caused Doyle to “revive” Holmes in 1901’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. |
Monday, October 24, 2011
Another 10 Fictional Geniuses
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