“Frankenstein is considered as one of the most subversive attacks on modern science.”
During the 19th century, Shelley published one of the most important works science fiction ever created. To do so, she spent a considerable amount of time on researches for her novel. She based her book on scientific theories, travels and places from several authors. Thus, she had an impressive reading list that included important works at this period as the work of extreme accounts of polar exploration in George Anson’s 1748 Voyage Round the World; the distinction between alchemy and chemistry in Davy’s 1812 Elements of Chemical Philosophy; the new concepts of brain development explored in Lawrence’s physiological lectures; and she encountered the psychology of guilt and abandonment; in John Milton’s 1667 Paradise Lost. All these works were the predecessors that help Shelley to push this genre to a new level. Moreover, she based the places of her book on several actual loci. For example, she inspired the location for the central confrontation between Victor Frankenstein and The Creature with the Mont Blanc, which is an important scene in the novel.
Another important reason Frankenstein is considered as one of the first real work of Sci-Fi is that she was one of the first to be able to create a story that was futuristic at the time compared with the scientific resources that she had. However, she was still able to include several human characteristics that everyone could relate to them. Thus, she had an incredible sense of creativity and created a story that included future issues that can happen in the future even though she did not have actual knowledge about these probable situations. It is quite impressive because Shelley started to write Frankenstein when she was only a teenager, which demonstrates that she had an outstanding mind.
Finally, Shelley’s work has influence society throughout different decades, which makes her one of the most influential Sci-Fi authors of all time. Even nowadays we can see similar patterns of Frankenstein in several novels and movies that has astonishing sales on the chart. We can say that Shelley has set the rules and standards for not only her generation but also for future generations that still nowadays view her work as a pioneer in this genre.
Frankenblog 