"You are my creator, but I am your master - obey!"
The monster to Victor Frankenstein. (Shelley, 1818)

The origins of Mary Shelley's gothic horror tale can be traced to a few evenings in1816 when Shelley, her husband Percy, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori were travelling through Switzerland on their way to Italy. Thunderstorms stopped their travels for a few nights, leading to a challenge as to who among them could write the scariest story. Byron and Percy Shelley's tales are all but forgotten, but Polidori produced a story called The Vampyre. Mary Shelley wrote the now famous Frankenstein. She was only 19 years old. To my mind, this tale is where science fiction first appears fully formed. Frankenstein has been interpreted in many ways, as man against nature or, perhaps most relevant here, as a critique of science and technology. Perhaps most powerfully, the story can be read as a feminist critique of science. Ann Mellor (1988) notes that Francis Bacon identifies science with sexual politics:

Shelley was perhaps one of the first to note the dangers in using gendered metaphors in describing science (Mellor, 1988). Though the setting and mood of the story are like a classic gothic ghost story, the horror is not supernatural but natural, enabled by science. The empathy Shelley is able to create for what is truly a monster is quite marked, and the enduring popularity of the novel is a testament to its power to strike an emotional chord with many. As well, from this story and the 1931 film Frankenstein directed by James Whale with Boris Karloff as the monster, we have a whole set of what are now cultural clichés: the dark and stormy night, the mad scientist, and the misunderstood monster. The story has been retold hundreds of times and in many different ways so that virtually everyone in western society recognizes the Frankenstein monster.

(For more on the portrayal of women and feminism in science fiction see Women in Sci-Fi).

The look of Karloff's Frankenstein monster in the 1931 movie is partly based on the make up used for the Golem in the 1920 German film, Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam directed by Paul Wegener. The plot of the movie is strikingly similar in places to the Frankenstein story.

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