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sethdmichaels.bsky.social · @sethdmichaels.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Frankenstein: By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley : Illustrated & Unabridged 8/10

A fascinating book to read for the first time, because it has an enormous pop-cultural footprint that is in many ways independent of and different from the book itself. Basically all of horror and science fiction is downstream of <i>Frankenstein</i>; the book has an interesting structure with embedded narratives and flows quickly despite the elaborate, heightened language of its era. It's composed of a couple of different horror-movie nightmare scenarios. The first, affecting the doctor, is the classic "you've done something terribly wrong and it's putting you and people you love in danger"; the second, narrated by the erudite creature himself, is "you're thrust into a world where everyone seems to hate and fear you and you're not sure why." The first-person narrative style foregrounds the subjective emotional experience, the suspense and grief and self-loathing, rather than the plot, which is actually pretty simple. Although it's about big questions and themes, takes place over a big geographical scale, and is considered a monumental work, it's very intimate, with very few named characters. It's also much more horror-y and not very science-y; absent is the focus on the "how" you usually get in subsequent sci-fi (I was surprised, for instance, that there's no *process* described, and no lightning-and-dials-and-switches "it's alive!" scene). It remains a rewarding read two centuries after it was written.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 21:23 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere