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Worlds Without End Blog

WoGF Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Posted at 8:30 PM by Neringa Terleckaite

Zoori

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeNeringa Terleckaite’s (Zoori): My passion for reading comes from my parents. The very first SF book I read was the Desert by Colin Wilson of Spider-world series. Since then I am convinced that spiders are mind-readers, however, all means of communication have failed so far. SF is a way of escapism for me, as well as a celebration of human imagination combined with its universal themes. WoGF is a great encouragement to discover new worlds, and tell others about them.


FrankensteinFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley.

I believe that starting my WoGF readings with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has been a logical choice in terms of chronology of the genre: this book is considered one of the first modern science fiction novels. It has also been practical, since that was the only unread SF/F woman writer in my personal collection (until I learnt of WoGF). Starting my WoGF reviews with a world’s classic horror story is challenging. Who has not heard of Frankenstein or seen one of its many adaptations in popular culture? The name has become part of the English dictionary meaning “a person who creates something that brings about his ruin” contrary to the common confusion of the name with the actual monster. However, how many actually know it was written by a woman author? Or that it was first published anonymously in 1818?

It is a story of Victor Frankenstein, a young, bright and ambitious scientist, who creates a living being in his laboratory. Only after witnessing the awakening of the monster does he realize the madness and horror behind this act, and escapes his creation only to become haunted by it. Gradually not only his sanity but also his personal life gets ripped to pieces by the consequences of such action, in the end turning into a deadly chase. The question is: who is the actual monster?

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Frankenstein’s Forefathers Posted at 1:24 PM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

We all know that Frankenstein’s monster was brought to life by powerful bolt of lightening.   The image of him strapped to his iron bed as electricity courses through his body is an iconic Hollywood image.  Never mind that such never transpired in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.  For many of us, that is how he was born, whatever the book says. If, however, you were dismayed at the absence of such an origin the original Frankenstein, don’t be.  The Creature may very well have been born from a thunderclap.

It was the summer of 1816 when an eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley traveled with her husband, the incomparable Percy Blysshe Shelley, to Lake Geneva, where they rented a house adjacent to their friend, Lord Byron.  The three of them were joined by Byron’s personal nurse (and likely lover), John Polidori.  This was the Year of No Summer, when the Mt. Tambora eruption (the most powerful in recorded history) released so much ash into the atmosphere that temperatures plummeted in many areas of the world.  One of the hardest hit areas was Lake Geneva, where it “proved a wet, ungenial summer”, according to Mrs. Shelley, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.”  So, instead of spending their “pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on its shores,” as they had done before Tambora’s ash blotted out the sun, they plunged themselves into (what else?) books:

Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise. His gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete armour, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by the moon’s fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back, a step was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the stalk. I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday.

These stories famously inspired the Geneva circle (Lord Byron, Polidori, and Percy and Mary Shelley) to write their own tales of woe.  It was Byron’s idea.  “We shall each write a ghost story,” he proclaimed.  The game was afoot.  It was due to that challenge that Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a story that started the vampire trope in Western literature.  Polidori, according to Shelley, penned a god-awful story “about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole—what to see I forget—something very shocking and wrong.”  Eventually, Polidori ditched this story in favor of Byron’s, writing his own novel, The Vampyre, based on Byron’s fragment.  The great Percy Shelley also began a story (based on his own childhood), but, as with the other two, he quickly gave up.  As Mary put it, “The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished the uncongenial task.”

We all know who must have won Byron’s challenge.  Mary Shelley was the only one to actually complete her “ghost story,” Frankenstein.  It was unlike any ghost story ever written, however, because, instead of a bodiless soul, this “ghost,” was a reanimated body.  Mrs. Shelley had turned the ghost story on its ear.

The Geneva Wager is a story you may have heard before.  I remember hearing it when I first read Frankenstein as a teenager.  It is, after all, where two monumental icons of 19th century horror originated.  They are especially important icons for this time of year: Frankenstein’s monster and vampires are as essential to Hallowe’en as trick or treating.  Yet one aspect of the story always eluded me:  What were those stories that so captured the imagination of the Geneva circle that it would inspire monsters as enduring as the Creature and the Undead?

All I had to go on was Mary’s description, “Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French,” and a footnote describing the French title as Fantasmagoria.  Even if I could find that tome, I don’t speak French!  What is a linguistically impaired nerd to do?  Eventually, of course, the Interwebs provided.  It turns out Internet Archive (a rockin’ site that documents everything on the web and many things off it) has as a wonderful PDF scan of an 1813 edition, called Tales of the Dead.  In it, you will find the two stories that Mary Shelley described.  “The Death-Bride” (which she describes as “the History of the Inconstant Lover,” and “The Family Portraits,” (which she described in greatest detail) are particularly eerie tales that might keep you up at night, especially if you have a guilty conscience.

Automata 101: Frankenstein’s Monster as Golem Posted at 4:05 AM by Rhonda Knight

Rhondak101

Rhonda Knight is an Associate Professor of English at Coker College in Hartsville, SC. She teaches Medieval and Renaissance literature as well as composition courses. This blog will outline her experiences teaching an Honors English Composition course about created entities, beginning with the golem of Jewish legend and continuing through cyborgs, robots, androids, and artificial intelligence.


FrankensteinBefore we started reading Frankenstein, I wanted to introduce the students to many of the concepts we would work with this semester. For the first class, they listened to a children’s story, The Golem of Prague, and read a different account of it by Jacob Grimm. They also read Jorges Luis Borges’ poem “The Golem” and Biblical and Talmudic verses about the creation. Here’s a translation of Borges’ poem, though we used a different translation from Borges: Selected Poems in class.

These varied texts enabled us to list some parameters for the semester’s discussion on the board. The ones that I remember most clearly are:

  • creation – magical, divine, scientific: where do they overlap? how can we tell?
  • man playing God, creating the other, creating new Adams: what is the responsibility of the maker?
  • importance of material in creation: clay, mud, dust, dirt. What other materials will we see?
  • communication: why can some golems speak, others not? how will communication or lack of it figure in these texts?

We spent a lot of time working on the complex meaning of Borges’ last stanza:

“In that hour of dread and blurred light,
his eyes lingered on his Golem.
Who will tell us, what did God feel,
looking upon His rabbi in Prague?”

 

The class focused quickly on the lines’ various interpretations: Does God feel that He failed when He created man? Has He always felt this way? Did the rabbi’s making the Golem cause this feeling? Does this poem pose creation as positive and human or instead ambition as negative and taboo?

Frankenstein's MonsterAll of this was a perfect set-up for Frankenstein, which we began the next class. Only about four of the seventeen students had read the book before, so much of our first discussion dealt with their surprise that the creature is not called Frankenstein and he’s not a green giant with bolts in his neck. I told the students that that particular image emerged from James Whale’s 1931 movie that starred Boris Karloff as the creature; however I did not know much more. After class, I found a great website that discusses Universal’s make-up artist, Jack Pierce’s, philosophy in designing the monster’s overall look. I posted the link on the course website, and we discussed it a bit in the next class.

The students were also surprised that there’s so little discussion of how Victor Frankenstein made the creature. We discussed how this is often considered the first science fiction novel even though it contains very little science. (The WWEnd forum has a good discussion about early science fiction.) We spent some time differentiating the kinds of science that does appear in the book. Interestingly, Shelley’s introduction provides some details of her vision concerning Frankenstein’s use of engines and galvanism in the animation of the creature. Those details are glossed over in the novel. Nevertheless, Shelley very carefully poses the new Enlightenment sciences of chemistry and anatomy against medieval and Renaissance notions of alchemy. Of course, the irony is that the combination of both types of knowledge allows Frankenstein to do the unthinkable and create life.

Prometheus punishedWe decided that Shelley’s paucity of science indicates that she’s not really interested in the “how” but in what happens after the creation. I focused them on the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, as a way to discuss the book’s role as a cautionary tale against scientific overreaching. Most of them knew that Prometheus brought fire to man in Greek mythology. However, they did not know that in some myths he created mankind from clay and water; this, of course, brought us back to the golem stories. Some remembered that Prometheus’ punishment was to have his internal organs eaten by vultures each day and then they would regenerate at night so that they could be eaten again in an eternal cycle of punishment. We compared this physical punishment to Victor Frankenstein’s mental anguish. I was proud that several of them made the connection between Frankenstein and his interlocutor, Captain Walton, as men whose scientific curiosity could lead to their anguish and destruction.

The paragraphs above represent only a fraction of issues that arose in class: we also discussed the Edenic/pastoral overtones of the creature’s desires, the role of the Industrial Revolution in Shelley’s work, and Frankenstein as a romantic hero.

I think Frankenstein was a good place to begin our discussion. The novel makes a good foundation for future discussions about the role of responsibility in scientific discovery. The students seemed very grounded in their understanding of the issues we will be exploring. I’m glad they gained that confidence because next up is E.T.A. Hoffman, who is always a bit disjointed and perplexing.


Automata 101: Introduction Posted at 8:22 PM by Rhonda Knight

Rhondak101

Rhonda Knight is an Associate Professor of English at Coker College in Hartsville, SC. She teaches Medieval and Renaissance literature as well as composition courses. This blog will outline her experiences teaching an Honors English Composition course about created entities, beginning with the golem of Jewish legend and continuing through cyborgs, robots, androids, and artificial intelligence.


Golem! This semester I’m teaching a course that examines the relationship between humans and created beings. (I wish I had a catchier name, but "created beings" seems to cover the various organic, mechanical and digital creatures that inhabit my syllabus.) Since the Worlds Without End site, especially the sub-genre lists, was instrumental in my syllabus development, I decided to share my reading list in the forum. From there, Dave, Rico and I decided that it might be interesting if I blogged about my experiences and those of my students. This first blog will serve as an overview while the subsequent ones will focus on specific texts or issues.

First, a bit about the class: Coker College offers one section of Honors Composition each semester. The students are all good readers and writers as well as enthusiastic and industrious — a pleasure to teach. Most of them are first-semester, first-year students. Often it is a challenge to find literary texts that these students have not studied in their AP or Honors English classes or read on their own, so I always try to pick out-of-the-mainstream texts that most of them have not read or often have not heard about.

This year my inspiration for the course is the keynote speaker for the Coker College Undergraduate Humanities Conference in February. He is J. Andrew Brown, author of Cyborgs in Latin America. (You can download a free copy of the book here.) The conference co-founder, Dr. Mac Williams, is an Assistant Professor of Spanish, and he informed me that there are many innovative Hispanophone novels that explore the relationships between technology and humanity, posthumanity, and the like. I decided that this would be a great way to tie my recreational reading with a class whose goal would be to have student papers worthy for presentation at the conference in February. This type of presentation will be a new experience for freshman students who usually don’t have such opportunities.

In the class, we will read novels, short stories, essays, and articles from social science journals and popular magazines. We will also watch movies. I will talk about the secondary works as I blog about each section, but in this overview it is my intention to discuss each section and the primary works in it.

Frankenstein In Frankenstein’s Monster as Golem, we will apply several texts about the Golem and creation to Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein. The primary questions we will explore in this section are: Why does Victor Frankenstein try to create a being? What is his responsibility to the being once created? What is at stake when one pushes the boundaries of science and knowledge? Can scientists/inventors ever "get it right" if they are afraid to "get it wrong"?

 

The Best Tales of Hoffmann In Gothic Romance and the Uncanny, we will read several short texts — E. T. A. Hoffmann‘s stories, "The Sandman" and "The Automata," Edgar Allan Poe‘s essay, "Maelzel’s Chess Player," and F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre‘s "The Clockwork Horror," which is a retelling of Poe’s essay. My goal in this section is to introduce the students to the concept of the uncanny. The texts all focus on 19th century "robots," or clockwork beings, which will allow us to test the boundaries of what makes these machines uncanny.

 

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) In Robots and the Mechanical Age, we will read several of Isaac Asimov‘s stories and essays from Robot Visions and Karel Capek‘s play R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). We will also watch clips from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I hope that the movie will help the students understand the context of R.U.R, which is a very powerful piece but a bit didactic in its tone. This section explores what happens when mechanical creatures learn, evolve and start making decisions. We will not ignore the Marxist overtones, but we will also look at these robots as robots and not just as symbols the proletariat. We will examine the texts as explorations of human fears and desires concerning robots.

 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In Cyborgs and Androids, we will focus on the two most intriguing novels of the bunch, Marge Piercy‘s He, She and It and Philip K. Dick‘s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We will also watch Blade Runner. Unfortunately, this is the section that I have thought the least about. I know we will do some work on defining terms, robot, cyborg, and android and discuss their slipperiness in science fiction writing. We will also continue our discussion that we begun in the previous section about created beings and free will.

 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & ClayIn the final section, The Artist as Golem Maker, we will read Michael Chabon‘s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Golem plays a small role in this novel, but this exploration of the origin of comics provides an interesting way into discussing modern and postmodern ideas of creation. I hope that by November many of the ideas we’ve discussed will represent themselves in the guise of the superheroes.

 

I hope this introduction has piqued your interest and you will send me feedback as I document the course. So far the students have been extremely enthusiastic and we’ve had some great discussions – more on that in my next blog.

All Hallow’s Read Posted at 1:09 AM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

Labor Day has come and gone, and you know what that means. Well, here in Texas, it means no more long strings of 100+° days. For the rest of you, it could mean the start of a new school year, locking up your favorite white sweater, and stocking up for Halloween. Normally, I don’t think about that last thing until, oh, around noon on October 31st. This year, however, I’ll be scoping the used book stores about once per week in preparation for All Hallow’s Read, a new tradition that Neil Gaiman suggested so late last year that I wasn’t prepared to do anything about it. Well, this year, I’m going to be ready.

You can’t just give out any book, of course. It has to be scary. Because I want to promote the best in science fiction and fantasy, I also want them to be WWEnd books. After all, I have my standards. So, here’s my strategy: I made a list of the scariest novels in the WWEnd database for this week’s blog entry. Then, I’m taking my smart phone to the local Half Price Books, where I will pull up this very blog entry. See how organized I am? I’m hoping to get dozens of copies of the following books:

FrankensteinFrankenstein, by Mary Shelley

This one is a no-brainer. Not only does it appear on virtually every classic SF list (including Classics of SF, Locus, Guardian, and NPR), it has long been held to be the first science fiction novel ever (Brian Aldiss makes the argument in Billion Year Spree). It’s also worth noting that the first science fiction novelist was a woman, making Frankenstein the oldest book on the SF Mistressworks list. The novel is, perhaps, most scary to government officials, as it was variously banned in places like South Africa and (gulp) Texas.

 

DraculaDracula, by Bram Stoker

It wasn’t the first (or even the third) vampire novel ever written, but it is, of course, the most renowned. The Guardian said that the book "spawned fiction’s most lucrative entertainment industry," but we are more impressed by its literary chops. The critics of the day favorably compared Dracula to Shelly, Emily Bronte and even the great Edgar Allan Poe. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was impressed. Your trick-or-treaters are the best testament to the novel’s greatness, as Dracula is arguably the most popular Halloween costume — ever.

 

The Day of the TriffidsThe Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndam

Unless you are a fan of the old black and white B movies, you probably associated man-eating plants with Little Shop of Horrors. But before Audrey 2 there were Triffids, horrifying venomous carnivores that began to prey on humans right after a meteor shower renders virtually all humans blind. That’s double the horror! At one point, the seemingly intelligent plants figure out how to herd sightless humans into groups, to, you know, maximize the carnage. The Day of the Triffids is a must read according to the Guardian and David Pringle. It also made the Classics of SF list.

 

Other novels I might give out include The Midwich Cuckoos (John Wyndam, again), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stephenson, Shadowland by Peter Straub, and anything by Stephen King (including his BFS award winning novel, It) or Clive Barker. For more ideas, check out the Dark Fantasy sub-genre list… and, please, tell us in the comments section what books you are going to give out.