The Wiley Handbook of Genius

22 Literary Geniuses Their Life, Work, and Death

Alexander S. McKay and James C. Kaufman

In 1953, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 captured readers with an idea of a dystopian America, with no books to read or creative thoughts to be had. There was mindless conversation with disillusioned happiness. This theme has been consistently reflected in novels depicting totalitarian and postapocalyptic worlds, such as George Orwell's 1984 (where books constituted grounds for execution), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (where the only books or poetry allowed to be written were in praise of the “One State”).

Can you imagine living in any of these worlds? Actually, you probably can. Each of these authors has finely painted unique worlds with their ideas and words. Without the work of great creative writers, modern thought and language would be at a standstill. Think of Asimov's The Robot Series, where he coined the word “robotics” (1983), or the hundreds of phrases Shakespeare created (Macrone, 1990; Simonton, 2009a). William Gibson coined the word “cyberspace,” Dr. Seuss gave us “nerd,” and John Milton alone added 630 words to the dictionary, including “pandemonium” and “sensuous” (Crace, 2008). Metaphors from literature and our creative thoughts dictate the way we see the world in everything from sciences, economics, advertising, and politics – the list is endless (Geary, 2011).

What distinguishes these writers – the geniuses who ...