FRANKENSTEIN!!!!!!!! AND SCIENCE FICTION AND ROMANTICISM!!!!!! AHHH!!!!!!!

FRANKENSTEIN!!!! I cannot convey my excitement to you in words, but I’ll try my best. For anyone that doesn’t know me too well (and that’s just about everyone in our class), I’m a science fiction nerd. I’ll avoid explaining how this came to be and instead focus on Frankenstein, science fiction, and romanticism, three topics that I’d like to explore in several blogs over the next couple of weeks. (You might be asking why but as I’m sure you’ll see at this end of this blog, as well as the others I intend to write, science fiction and romanticism share a lot of similarities.)

As Janelle mentioned in class the other day, many people (Brian Aldiss and Isaac Asimov included) acknowledge Frankenstein as the first work of science fiction. This tells me two things:

(1) Frankenstein meets all the credentials required to be a science fiction work.
(2) No other work before Frankenstein met these credentials, whatever they may be.

I haven’t read Aldiss’s Billion Year Spree, where he proposes his argument for Frankenstein as the first work of science fiction, but I believe that I’ve managed to pick up enough from Asimov (I now realize this is the second time that I’ve mentioned this name—for those of you who don’t know him, Isaac Asimov, though dead now, was arguably the greatest science fiction authors of all time) as to why Aldiss thinks this.

According to Asimov (and this is Asimov’s own definition of the genre), science fiction is anything that has the following:

(1). Takes place in a world that is neither our own nor so foreign that it couldn’t be our own (in other words, our world isn’t this but could be this some day—Asimov says this to distinguish science fiction not only from realistic fiction but also from fantasy fiction);
(2). Science fiction deals with some sort of social change.

(2) chiefly interests me because it bears a lot of relation to a subject that we’ve discussed minimally that itself bears a lot of relation to romanticism: the Industrial Revolution. According to Asimov (and possibly Aldiss, too), the Industrial Revolution is what made science fiction possible because it made social change visible to people in their own lifetime, probably for the first time in history. In other words, after the Industrial Revolution came about, people could (and would) see changes in their daily lives (the erection of factories is just one example).

For the most part, these changes stemmed from technological advancements, and technology, as we all know, is generally the offspring of science. Frankenstein’s monster is an example of technology (insofar as the monster being an advancement, that is, in my opinion, debatable—perhaps I can address this in another blog), and this is how we probably arrived at Aldiss’s conclusion about Frankenstein—it deals with a technological change that could be observed in one’s (Victor’s) own lifetime. Moreover (and this is a common staple of science fiction), the technology or creation (i.e. the monster) comes back and bites the creator (Victor Frankenstein) in the ass.

Frankenstein, however, is not the only Romantic work that shares similarities with science fiction: Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” and “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” are two other good examples, and I promise that I’ll list several more in the forthcoming blogs. The point is, the Romantic poets were living in a time when rapid social changes were occurring, social changes that they could observe, and there is no doubt that these changes influenced their writing.

I now realize that this blog has carried on far too long, so I’ll wrap it up here. Before ending it, though, I would like to say that if you have any interest in the science fiction/romanticism parallels, please talk with me about it or respond to my blog. I love discussing the two subjects and, as I said earlier, I’m hoping to write more blogs on this topic.

A monster - or not?

I read Frankenstein for the first time. (It is so interesting to see how the literary canon differs from country to country, I haven't read any of the novels or poems before. And I also don't know a lot of the references which are made). I always thought that Frankenstein is just a spooky horror-story...I even do not know how the story ends except that the monster somehow turns against its creator. I have never seen a movie about it and my only associations with this topic were the green-skinned, tall monster and 'never try to play God - it will come to a bad end'. And I also thought that Frankenstein would be the name of the monster.
Now, everything changes. Surprisingly, the monster does not eat meat! Yesterday evening/night I read the chapters about the monster's first winter in the little shed close to the poor family. And I was deeply moved by the description. The monster seems to be so innocent, so kind, so helpful. He (and here I knowingly say 'he' instead of 'it' as he shows a lot of human chracter traits and acts very human: he can feel sorrow, pity, joy etc.) feels pity for the family, tries to help them by collecting firewood. He tries to find a way to become part of the family, and so he learns the language and how to read. In all his behavior he is like a little child, eager to learn more about the world. And at the same time, he is more than a child as he can already reflect on why people fear him. He is lonely and he knows why. He is othered and longs for community and love. This makes me so sad.
And I wonder how he will change, what will happen to him that he becomes a monster. Is it because of his lonelyness, his otherness? What is it that transforms an almost human being (related to the behavior, not to the outward appearance) into a beast? In how far is Victor responsible for this changing, is he alone to blame for it? Did Victor made him a monster?
I can't wait to read more.

Manfred - or, unanswered questions

It is a bit late for this post but in some sense it still fits. The poem Manfred is still working in my head, now even more b/c Frankenstein is looking for the great secrets - and so does Manfred. I realize that I still have more questions than answers, no matter how often I reread the poem. And honestly, I feel a bit caught by the question if we all become Manfred in some way - looking for answers, clues, explanations. I thought that Manfred is cursed because of his never ending quest for knowledge and the misuse of it. Maybe there is even more as the voice in the incantation accuses him of guile, hypocrisy, a serpent smile. Regardless of this: here I am, asking questions. I don't know where this leads to...
Manfred himself is his worst enemy. The strongest gift the voice coudl find is his own poison. He lost himself in thinking about things beyond his nature and so he 'forgot' to learn something about daily life. He knows too much about mankind, but at the same time the common man is totally alien for him. He is even alien to himself. And he put himself into this position. He lost contoact to the earth, mataphorically, spiritually as he regards himself as being better than men and equal or even mightier than the Spirits. And yet, he has to stay on earth, cannot get out of it, cannot die. At least, this is what the voice says: "nor to slumber, nor to die, / Shall be in thy destiny" (ln. 254f.). But then I don't understand why he dies in the end. Something must have changed but I cannot see what this could be. Manfred asks for oblivion but this wish is not fulfilled. He asks for forgiveness - but does not get an answer. Or is the prophecy that he will die the next day some sort of forgiveness? In the sense taht he is redeemed from his restless, forlorn life? The voice also says that hhe can never be alone - but as I see him, Manfred is the loneliest person on earth. Does this mean that he will always be persecuted by his thoughts, always persecuted by the "Spirits that (he) called" (Goethe: Der Zauberlehrling)?
The question is still there: what has changed, where and when did Manfred change? Did his constant suffering make him humble? I don't really believe this.
And there is the question about the abbot, why an abbot, why Manfred asks for his hand... I don't have any answers eiter. And I can hardly think about these questions, the thoughts criss-cross in my mind, create confusion. This is frustrating. Yes, I somehow become Manfred, I want to know the answers. Or do I have to accept that there are no answers?


Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the setting of Manfred

In view of this breathtaking landscape - should not I just stop asking questions? And admiring, enjoying the beauty of Earth?

Death is all around

I was thinking about why mankind is so obsessed with death. We hear about it everyday through news and media, everyday life, and our literature. Constantly, the theme of death resonates. But why do we keep going back to that. Just looking at the New York Times you can easily find stories like:

2 Men Arrested in Chicago May Have Links to Mumbai Attack

By LYDIA POLGREEN 3:28 PM ET

Investigators in India are retracing the steps of two men arrested in Chicago by the FBI to see if they helped plan the attacks that killed more than 160 people in November 2008.

OR...

Pirates Attack Maersk Alabama Again

By ALAN COWELL

Published: November 18, 2009

LONDON — Seaborne raiders in a high-speed skiff tried again on Wednesday to commandeer the Maersk Alabama, the American-flagged ship seized by pirates in April, the United States Navy said.

In a separate episode, the captain of a hijacked chemical tanker was reported to have died of gunshot wounds inflicted when pirates seized the MV Theresa with 28 North Korean crew members northw est of the Seychelles on Monday. The spate of attacks reflected the increasing boldness of pirates roaming far from their bases in Somalia to seize vessels and sailors to hold for ransom.

Everywhere in all types of ways people are acting on death or talking about death or writing about death. Victor Frankenstien was so obsessed with the dead versus the living that it ultimately led to his great demise. But if death is so hard to handle in all different aspects why do we dwell? Shouldn't we focus on life itself? Or do we focus on death because it is the only reason why we have motivation to live fully? Even after Mary Shelly came Anne Rice then (God love) Joss Weadon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in today's entertainment.
And how many tweens to moms across America are going to be watching the mid-night premere of Twilight Saga: New Moon? God knows I will be. But WHY??????? Isn't the HBO show True Blood just a serise about the living dead's soft porn?

Life and death is all around us and we can't stop obsessing with it in so many different outlets. Zombies, vampires, worms - is mankind doomed to forever focus on the unknown?

addendum

My computer skills are not that great. I don't know how to include a direct link to these stories. they can be read at :

http://www.sff.net/people/DoylemacDonald/l_frag.htm

and

http://www.sff.net/people/Doylemacdonald/l_vampyr.htm

Set up for Frankenstein

I am reading Frankenstein for the third time and it just gets better and better. The conception of the novel really interests me-Percy Shelly and Mary Shelley vacationing with Byron and John Polidori in the Swiss Alps. I took a class two summers ago entitled "Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves in Literature and Film." We spent a lot of time discussing the formation of the popular vampire image and it is rooted in the meeting of these four in the summer of 1816. As Mary Shelly stated in the original introduction to Frankenstein, the idea for her novel came out of reading ghost stories when the weather prohibited the group from going outdoors. Percy Shelly produced nothing, Byron his "Fragment of a Novel," and Pollidori "some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady." A few years later, "The Vampyre" was published and its authorship was attributed to Byron. John Polidori, however, claimed authorship of the story saying that Byron's "Fragment" served as the inspiration. I have included links of both these stories in case anyone is interested in reading them. Polidori's vampire remarkably resembles the popular view of Lord Byron at the time. Just thought it would be cool to look at what else came out of that summer beside Frankenstein.