This book surveys the early history of one of our most important modern myths: the story of Frankenstein and the monster he created from dismembered corpses, as it appeared in fictional and other writings before its translation to the cinema screen. It examines the range of meanings whichMary Shelley's Frankenstein offers in the light of the political images of `monstrosity' generated by the French Revolution. Later chapters trace the myth's analogues and protean transformations in subsequent writings, from the tales of Hoffmann and Hawthorne to the novels of Dickens, Melville,Conrad, and Lawrence, taking in the historical and political writings of Carlyle and Marx as well as the science fiction of Stevenson and Wells. The author shows that while the myth did come to be applied metaphorically to technological development, its most powerful associations have centred onrelationships between people, in the family, in work, and in politics.
The most infamous doctor of the Gothic Era once again delves into the forbidden secrets of the world, when literature's most famous creature lives again . . . Frankenstein . . . His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world's most famous creature lives again. Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest—with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterton, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton. Plus, you're sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley's original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it's time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.
In Victor Frankenstein, the Monster and the Shadows of Technology: The Frankenstein Prophecies, Romanyshyn asks eight questions that uncover how Mary Shelley’s classic work Frankenstein haunts our world. Providing a uniquely interdisciplinary assessment, Romanyshyn combines Jungian theory, literary criticism and mythology to explore answers to the query at the heart of this book: who is the monster? In the first six questions, Romanyshyn explores how Victor’s story and the Monster’s tale linger today as the dark side of Frankenstein’s quest to create a new species that would bless him as its creator. Victor and the Monster are present in the guises of climate crises, the genocides of our "god wars," the swelling worldwide population of refugees, the loss of place in digital space, the Western obsession with eternal youth and the eclipse of the biological body in genetic and computer technologies that are redefining what it means to be human. In the book’s final two questions, Romanyshyn uncovers some seeds of hope in Mary Shelley’s work and explores how the Monster’s tale reframes her story as a love story. This important book will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian theory, literature, philosophy and psychology, psychotherapists in practice and in training, and for all who are concerned with the political, social and cultural crises we face today.
This is a laugh-out-loud funny and devilish send-up of Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeline for little monsters everywhere. Frankenstein is the scariest of all the monsters in Miss Devel's castle. He can frighten anything—animals, parents, even rocks. Until one night, Miss Devel wakes up and runs downstairs to find that Frankenstein has lost his head! Frankenstein by Rick Walton and illustrated by Nathan Hale is a delightful twist on a classic story that parents and kids can both enjoy together. This is the perfect funny picture book read for Halloween or the fall season. Praise for Frankenstein: “Walton twists the classic rhymes of the original with glee ('In two crooked lines, they bonked their heads / pulled out their teeth / and wet their beds') while Hale reenacts each scene with devilish mayhem.” -Booklist “The illustrations have traded sunny yellow for pumpkin orange backgrounds and make comically sly allusions to the original title.” -Kirkus Reviews
With the release of Universal's 1931 movie, "Frankenstein," the story of Dr. Frankenstein's monster became an instantly recognizable cultural landmark. In this all-new novel inspired by the classic film, Stefan Petrucha introduces a new generation of fans to the famous fiend with a new spin on his story. In this take, Henry Frankenstein flees to London following his lab's explosion. The monster follows, but winds up being mistaken for a disfigured mental case and befriended by local prostitutes. When one of the whores is horribly murdered, the creature roams the area, trying to protect the survivors. This brings him in contact with the real killer, Jack the Ripper. Seeing in the reanimated corpse of the monster a possible way to live forever, the aging Ripper schemes to frame him for the killings and force Henry to reveal the secrets of life and death. Petrucha's lively story and memorable characters make this a riveting read.
Tracing the history of the development of biological science and how it has been received by the public over two centuries, this book argues that the Frankenstein story governs much of today's debate about the onrushing new age of biotechnology.
In this original, historical ghost story set in 1918, the year of the deadly Spanish influenza, 16-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to sances and spirit photographers for comfort. Mary's never believed in ghosts, until her first loveNa boy who died in battleNreturns.
Two centuries after its original publication, Mary Shelley’s classic tale of gothic horror comes to vivid life in "what may very well be the best presentation of the novel" to date (Guillermo del Toro). "Remarkably, a nineteen-year-old, writing her first novel, penned a tale that combines tragedy, morality, social commentary, and a thoughtful examination of the very nature of knowledge," writes best-selling author Leslie S. Klinger in his foreword to The New Annotated Frankenstein. Despite its undeniable status as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written, Mary Shelley’s novel is often reductively dismissed as the wellspring for tacky monster films or as a cautionary tale about experimental science gone haywire. Now, two centuries after the first publication of Frankenstein, Klinger revives Shelley’s gothic masterpiece by reproducing her original text with the most lavishly illustrated and comprehensively annotated edition to date. Featuring over 200 illustrations and nearly 1,000 annotations, this sumptuous volume recaptures Shelley’s early nineteenth-century world with historical precision and imaginative breadth, tracing the social and political roots of the author’s revolutionary brand of Romanticism. Braiding together decades of scholarship with his own keen insights, Klinger recounts Frankenstein’s indelible contributions to the realms of science fiction, feminist theory, and modern intellectual history—not to mention film history and popular culture. The result of Klinger’s exhaustive research is a multifaceted portrait of one of Western literature’s most divinely gifted prodigies, a young novelist who defied her era’s restrictions on female ambitions by independently supporting herself and her children as a writer and editor. Born in a world of men in the midst of a political and an emerging industrial revolution, Shelley crafted a horror story that, beyond its incisive commentary on her own milieu, is widely recognized as the first work of science fiction. The daughter of a pioneering feminist and an Enlightenment philosopher, Shelley lived and wrote at the center of British Romanticism, the “exuberant, young movement” that rebelled against tradition and reason and "with a rebellious scream gave birth to a world of gods and monsters" (del Toro). Following his best-selling The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft and The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Klinger not only considers Shelley’s original 1818 text but, for the first time in any annotated volume, traces the effects of her significant revisions in the 1823 and 1831 editions. With an afterword by renowned literary scholar Anne K. Mellor, The New Annotated Frankenstein celebrates the prescient genius and undying legacy of the world’s "first truly modern myth." The New Annotated Frankenstein includes: Nearly 1,000 notes that provide information and historical context on every aspect of Frankenstein and of Mary Shelley’s life Over 200 illustrations, including original artwork from the 1831 edition and dozens of photographs of real-world locations that appear in the novel Extensive listings of films and theatrical adaptations An introduction by Guillermo del Toro and an afterword by Anne K. Mellor
