The vast majority of novels written in 1818 are no longer remembered by modern readers, but Mary Shelley’s Gothic sci-fi classic Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus is as popular as ever.
It’s so popular, in fact, that the publication Collider just ranked it No. 1 in its list of most acclaimed science fiction books ever written. Mary Shelley “created the archetypal mad scientist, the essence of every reckless nuclear researcher or rogue AI developer to follow,” writes Luc Haasbroek. “In this sense, Frankenstein is an enduring warning about the dangers of technological hubris.”
It’s no mystery why Frankenstein has been adapted into so many TV shows, movies, musicals and plays: it tells the definitive tale of human hubris in the modern age. For the past two hundred years mankind’s most brilliant thinkers have been inventing world-changing technology without fully anticipating its world-changing implications; Christopher Nolan’s recent historical drama Oppenheimer, for instance, features a protagonist whom Victor Frankenstein would certainly relate to well.
Perhaps the most underrated part of Frankenstein is how morally dubious its protagonist is allowed to be. Just like viewers might be exasperated by Dr. Oppenheimer spending so much time on a mass-killing device only to be devastated when it’s used for mass killing, readers may be frustrated with Dr. Frankenstein for dedicating his life to reanimating the dead only to instantly change his mind when his plan succeeds. It’s annoying, sure, but if the current AI boom is any indication it’s certainly true to life.
Mary Shelley Was Just 18 When She Wrote ‘Frankenstein,’ 20 When It Was Published
It’s a fun fact that’ll make any adult writer feel insecure about their age: Shelley wrote one of the most famous books of the 19th century entirely in her teen years.
Its publication date was January 1, 1818, and it was not universally beloved straight away. One reviewer at the British Critic, for instance, wrote about Shelley’s work, “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”
As time went on and the consensus on Frankenstein grew increasingly positive, in turn rose the theories that Shelley was not the actual author of the book, that it was actually written by her husband Percy Shelley and/or one of the other male writers in her social circle at the time.
Although Percy did indeed appear to help out as an early reader/editor of her novel, these theories have never actually been proven. Her later novels, while never quite as popular as Frankenstein, were also good enough to prove that her first novel was well within her range of talent.
Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle in the horror comedy movie “Young Frankenstein”20th Century Fox
For Guillermo del Toro, the latest director to adapt Frankenstein to the big screen, the big appeal of Shelley’s novel was its existential horror.
“While reading the novel as a child, I was arrested by the epistolary form Shelley had chosen, because it felt so immediate,” del Toro wrote for the Atlantic. “I was overtaken by the Miltonian sense of abandonment, the absolute horror of a life without a reason. The tragedy of the tale was not dependent on evil. That’s the supreme pain of the novel—tragedy requires no villain.”
Del Toro explained further, “Just as [Edgar Allan] Poe will prefigure the ambiguities of psychiatry, Shelley utilizes the most cutting-edge science and philosophy to drive her existential discourse home. Galvanism, chemistry, and surgery provide the alibi for the monster to gain life, to arise and question all of us.”
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