Frankenstein

Perhaps the most classic work of horror fiction in both literature and cinema. As an English teacher, I find that there is so much fodder for lessons prevalent in this book–nature vs nurture, the dangers of forbidden knowledge and playing God, the arrogance of science, and who the real monster is. I particularly love the difference between The Monster in the novel and the film, its articulation, desires, abilities, and even its physical appearance. Few written works have been more seminal.

I’ve always loved this story of the misguided scientist and his outwardly monstrous but inwardly very sympathetic creation. My favorite scene is the one where the monster hides out in a shed of an unsuspecting family, and by watching them through a chink in the wall, he learns to speak; then, he learns to read with some of their abandoned books.

For me, his acquisition of language and literacy most poignantly characterizes his humanity in a surprising twist since Victor Frankenstein ought to be the learned one. The centrality of language to human experience has been an important theme in… show more.

I don't know if creating a monster from the remains of the dead qualifies as sci-fi, but I'm adding Mary Shelley's 1818 title anyway. This was one I got to read in middle school; we had a list of books we could read, but it was mandatory to read at least 5 for the year. Other than just a handful of books I've read that were written by female authors, this is the only one that can qualify as sci-fi.

Shelley has a very eloquent yet provocative voice. I think it would be near impossible to liken her tone, pace,… show more.

I have been a fan of Gothic and melodrama since I first watched the 1931 film Frankenstein with Boris Karloff–and I was delighted to discover that the book is even better and so much more than what we’ve ever seen on screen.

Frankenstein’s monster is articulate and soulful in Mary Shelley’s atmospheric, dread-filled original novel, and his plight is all the more moving because of it. She wrote it when she was just 18 years old, still grieving over the death of her first child two years earlier. I feel her aching sorrow on every page. 

I think the best way to understand this novel is to read it as a story about a father and a son. Victor Frankenstein creates a son whom he immediately rejects. The son seeks love and receives hate. The father fears and loathes what he has created. He refuses to take responsibility for what he has done, and the results come back to haunt him.

I think this speaks clearly to the choice we fathers must make when we start down this road, and it shows what can become of unloved sons. I’ve read this story many times, and I… show more.

I get it. This topic is low-hanging fruit, yet classic science fiction is always worth revisiting, particularly when it is the first of the genre. And the first was written by a woman.

It was 1818 when Mary Shelley explored what can happen when a laboratory experiment goes wrong. In this case, an experiment that eliminates the need for human propagation. Taking such an experiment to its logical conclusion eliminates the need for women. Or men for that matter. The prose holds up surprisingly well.

I recommend it because it illustrates why science fiction is as much an art form… show more.

First published in 1818 this tale is a Gothic masterpiece of morality and mortality.

A haunting rendition of a creator and his creation, extolling the unforeseen and tragic circumstances of playing God. Elevated in status from a character in a novel into an icon of the horror and science fiction genres, I doubt there is a citizen of the modern world today who does not know the tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster over two hundred years after its publication.

Love, isolation, loneliness, and ultimately revenge and death all converge in this story from the mind of an eighteen-year-old… show more.

Who’d expect a book written almost 150 years before computers were invented to be one of the best books to help us think about AI? In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores how good motivations can quickly go bad.

Scientist Frankenstein builds a monster with the best of intentions yet fails to foresee what could go wrong and to take the necessary precautions when what he has produced does go wrong. Then he tries to duck responsibility, ending up futilely trying to stop things from getting worse in a desperate bid to stop a chain reaction of destruction. 

Sounds like Silicon… show more.

Mary Shelly’s Gothic classic also shares many common spy elements, which is interesting as, due to its film representations and pop culture status, long been a companion/bookend to Dracula.

While the spy connections aren’t as strong as in some of my other selections, there are other aspects that do qualify it, the international travel being part of it. From the “megalomaniacal villain with a conspiratorial plot” side of things, it could be taken that Victor Frankenstein’s desire to create a new race that would look to him as its creator echoes some of what would later become a supervillain… show more.

This brilliant book, first published in 1818, is one of our earliest and most famous birth narratives written by a mother. 

Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died giving birth to her, and four of her five children died as infants. She wrote Frankenstein while pregnant, as a “dilation” that happened amid those devastations, and it is eerily prophetic of our moment. 

In the book, an ambitious scientist, intent on discovering the source of life, reanimates a corpse in his workshop, only to discover with horror as his creation comes to life, that he has created a monstrous being who will… show more.