In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous quotation from a classic work of Gothic literature
Here’s a question for you. What is the name of the ‘monster’ in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein?
a) Frankenstein
b) He doesn’t have one
c) Adam
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revisits Mary Shelley’s misunderstood parable and founding text of science fiction
Frankenstein is one of a handful of nineteenth-century fictional creations that went truly global and became ingrained in the popular consciousness. Along with Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, Mary Shelley’s character has flown free of the text which spawned it: Frankenstein has become synonymous with biological experimentation, the creation of hybrid ‘monsters’, and the perils of playing God. The Oxford English Dictionary includes the prefix ‘Franken-’, used to denote nouns implying genetic modification, most famously ‘Frankenfoods’. The OED also records ‘Frankenstein’ itself, in extended use, as both a noun and a verb.
Spencer Blohm examines the history of screen adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
For nearly two hundred years the archetype of the ‘mad scientist‘Â has been dominated by a single name: Dr. Victor Frankenstein. When Mary Shelley wrote and published her groundbreaking novel in 1818, there’s no way she could have known that her scientist and his creation would come to symbolize so much of the human condition and would be reimagined and reinvented countless times. Soon, what is sometimes referred to as the first science fiction novel, will once again be told on the big screen, this time in Victor Frankenstein.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
1. Her most famous novel, Frankenstein, is widely considered the first science fiction novel.
Brian Aldiss certainly thinks so. It’s worth mentioning here that two other leading science (fiction) writers, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, argued that the honour of ‘first science-fiction novel’ should go to a much earlier book: Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (‘The Dream’), first published in 1634.