Before the development (let alone the use) of a tool, first comes the identification of its need; its scope, in other words. As an academic with research interests revolving around the Gothic and science fiction, and with some rudimentary programming experience, I had a crazy idea. Most great ideas come as a result of madness and boredom, I suppose, and my idea was one just like that. What if, I thought, I made a simple program that could detect certain patterns in Gothic and science fiction? In other words, what if I made a literature computer analysis program that could help me create a taxonomy of the texts I’m researching?
