A bit behind with blogging, so quite a few Frankenstein items have accumulated (it being, as I’m sure you’ll know, the 200th anniversary of the novel’s publication).
First, a brief discussion, with some very useful links, of the claim by Brian Aldiss, reiterated recently by William Gibson, that Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel. This is contentious: some put forward Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666) as the first of the genre (I disagree). But read the article here:
‘Mary Shelley’s Handwritten Manuscript of Frankenstein: This Is “Ground Zero of Science Fiction,” Says William Gibson‘.
More on Mary Shelley’s novel, particularly on its relation to the visual arts, in Jonathan Jones, ‘Frankenstein and the gory gang: how the novel blazed a trail for high art horrors‘.
Helena Nicholson, in ‘The modern Prometheus: the relevance of Frankenstein 200 years on‘, assesses the contemporary relevance of the novel, calling up the familiar debate on how much the novel is a critique of science–a debate which is often too simplistic.
Claire Connolly writes on the Irish dimension of the novel in ‘Frankenstein’s Ireland: A “wretched” place with “traces of civilisation”’.
There’s an article on the moral questions raised by the novel by Raymond Boisvert : ‘Mary Shelley, Frankenstein & Moral Philosophy‘.
Finally, an article by Kelly Faircloth on the restored 1910 film of Frankenstein, with a link to the film.
