Erica+King


 * __Mary Shelley__** - __**Frankenstein**__

=**__Source One:__**= Schellenburg, James. __Challenging Destiny__. James Schellenburg, 2004. http://www.challengingdestiny.com/reviews/frankenstein.htm

1. Shelley's ** Frankenstein ** is a strong psychological drama, the pitiless tale of the destruction of one man. 2. Shelley's story has been played as horror in most adaptations but it's also a sound argument to call it science fiction. 3. As much as ** Frankenstein ** is a cliché when it's applied to new scientific advances, the knee-jerk warning of doom, it's also as if Shelley's book has never been applied at all. 4. Does Frankenstein deserve his cruel fate? Shelley seems to punish the man for two sins, hubris and lack of pity. Frankenstein creates life and then turns away from it. Perhaps it's as simple as the fact that he doesn't learn from his mistakes despite his brilliance. 5. Another reason for the book's enduring fame is the strength of the characters. 6. ** Frankenstein ** is well worth reading, and it's much different than the popular conception of the story.

**__Source Two:__**

 * "The Influence of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein on Science Fiction Literature - by Shelly Mcrae - Helium." //Helium - Where Knowledge Rules//. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.** [|**http://www.helium.com/items/345511-the-influence-of-mary-shelleys-frankenstein-on-science-fiction-literature**]**.**

1. Today, Shelley's Frankenstein can be cited as the prototype of science fiction. 2. But those science fiction stories that tend to hold up well over time inevitably employ that ephemeral element Mary Shelley's novel demonstrates so well, that of emotional investment on the part of the characters. 3. Though intended as a ghost story, Frankenstein became the cornerstone of a new genre, science fiction. 4. Yet, in her novel she employs the concept of science gone mad as well as a crossover theme of science versus nature. 5. Shelley replaced fire with electricity and thus merged the academic study of science with the art of fiction.

__Source 3:__"Mary Shelley." //C L a R a. N E T - Customer Index//. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. .

1. Frankenstein was a monster, though strictly speaking Frankenstein's Monster, the result of medical experimentation by Victor Frankenstein, 'a pale student of unhallowed arts', that went badly wrong, using stolen body parts.

__Source 4:__ "Mary Shelley Biography - Life, Children, Name, Story, Death, Wife, Mother, Young, Son, Book, Information, Born, Husband, House, Marriage, Time, Year, Sister." //Encyclopedia of World Biography//. Web. 02 May 2010. . 1. While most early reviewers criticized what they considered the gruesome (inspiring horror) elements in //Frankenstein,// many praised the author's imagination and powers of description.

Source 5: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." //Jessica Tiffin//. Web. 02 May 2010. .


 * 1) Shelley demonstrates an overt interest in science for its own sake.
 * 2) - Much of this reflects the context of Industrial Revolution, and the simultaneous excitement and threat of new technology
 * 3) The danger of science is a classic sf theme, and here Gothic provides the framework and tone for the horror of failed science, the experiment gone wrong.
 * 4) This is in many ways opposed to Shelley's Romantic influences - the Romantics tend to insist on the value of emotion rather than rationality, and thus reject the materialism of science.
 * 5) //Frankenstein//'s issues of constructedness, and exploration of the nature of humanity are precursors to modern sf's aliens, robots and AIs
 * 6) the novel has become a paradigm for explorations of identity under science.
 * 7) Shelley's novel is particularly interesting in that it uses science as way to think about issues of sexuality and motherhood.
 * 8) This can be contrasted to more modern sf in which science is seen as having the potential to release women from biological determinism.
 * 9) In Shelley's view, however, technological birth is monstrous, a further scientific appropriation of women that is doomed to disaster.
 * 10) One cannot deny the influence of //Frankenstein// on modern sf, but in fact the Gothic implications of the novel are probably not as important as Shelley's interest in science for its own sake.
 * 11) While the Gothic mode has inspired a powerful image of science as threatening, Shelley's exploration of the relationship between science and the individual is probably more influential than Gothic itself.

Source 6: (web) []
 * 1) Some claim the novel to be the first legitimate example of the genre we now call science fiction,
 * 2) is grounded in valid scientific research; (2) predicts what might be possible in the future given new scientific discoveries
 * 3) offers a humanistic critique of either specific technological inventions or the very nature of scientific thinking
 * 4) Jane Donawerth (1997) contends that //Frankenstein// is feminist science fiction because it introduced 3 themes that can be repeatedly observed in science fiction, as written by women:
 * 5) 1) locating a female voice in a male world;
 * 6) creating an identity for women as alien;
 * 7) the exclusion of women from science.
 * 8) While Mary Shelley was an extremely well read young woman, much of the scientific discoveries of the day were not broached in the novel.
 * 9) In addition, what was included was not always included correctly or in depth.
 * 10) It can be argued that the changes that Mary made in the novel between the 1818 and 1831 editions reduce the likelihood that the novel will become outdated.
 * 11) Reading the novel and using the characteristics of science fiction, as proposed by both Mellor and Donawerth, leads me to conclude that the novel does qualify as science fiction.
 * 12) Certainly it is not as scientific as contemporary science fiction, but that does not mean that Mary did not introduce a new literary genre with //Frankenstein//.
 * 13) The novel presents a scathing critique of the science of her day, that was anti-family and anti-female.

Source 7: "Science Fiction: The Early History." //Rutgers-Newark: The State University of New Jersey//. Web. 02 May 2010. .
 * 1) Shelley created one of the first science fiction visions of the end of the world;
 * 2) From this matrix emerged what Brian Aldiss has so aptly labeled "the first great myth of the industrial age" in the form of a novel that many now accept as the progenitor of modern science fiction: Mary Shelley's __Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus__ (1818). Then, less than a decade after __Frankenstein__