A lab coat, wild hair, thick glasses, and a savage glint in their eye as they watch their ill-considered experiment come to fruition—the mad scientist is a particularly recognizable trope in media and pop culture today. Mad scientists are mainly associated with science fiction and are also popular as stock villains in superhero comics, but what many don’t know is that this character trope has its roots in the Gothic. In fact, the villainization of science makes sense when you consider that the Gothic genre emerged as a reaction against the Enlightenment. While proponents of rationalism encouraged the pursuit of pure reason, many authors of the Gothic feared what such intellectualism might become when divorced from ethics and emotion. The character of the mad scientist is the embodiment of such anxieties, as we can see in several prominent works of Gothic literature.
The suspense genre recently lost one of its greatest literary figures: Mary Higgins Clark died on January 31, 2020, at the age of 92. She had been lauded for many decades as the “Queen of Suspense”—a well-earned titled considering that she published at least one best-selling suspense novel per year ever since her breakout debut in 1975. The suspense novel, or psychological thriller, is one of the many modern genres that evolved out of the Gothic. It is closely tied to another of these genres, 
You probably know Oscar Wilde from his iconic Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (and its unfortunate role in his trial for homosexuality). He is also widely celebrated for his comedic plays, like The Importance of Being Earnest. But less well-known is a delightful little piece that combines Wilde’s Gothic sensibilities with his biting sense of humor: The Canterville Ghost (1887) is a short story that parodies common elements of the typical ghost story while also satirizing differences in attitude and behavior between Americans and the British.