Chapter 6: Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein

Cover Page The handle https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3134626 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Siglé, J.A. Title: From monsters to mediators: The evolution of the theme of altruism in early robotic science fiction texts Issue Date: 2021-01-28 Chapter 6: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein This chapter revisits Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) which has received much attention both within and outside science fiction discourses.18 However, some of the specifically robotic nuances of her text may have been overlooked, given that her text is polemical and comprehensive in its treatments of both science and gothic fiction. This chapter examines Frankenstein’s treatment of a Turing test moment as well as the theme of altruism. The creature, being the first of its kind, like any robot, constitutes a binary opposition to humanity, and eventually orbits problems relating to intergroup competition. Frankenstein is not about an automaton in the strict sense, but the novel deals explicitly with the creation of an artificial humanoid, while it also in relation to this artificial creation engages with themes of group selection and altruism. According to Kang, the novel “is commonly considered the first work of science fiction” (218) because of Percy Shelley’s preface which distinguishes Frankenstein from conventional Gothic narratives that incorporate supernatural elements.19 Sian MacArthur, while also identifying Frankenstein in Gothic Science Fiction (2015) as the “[…] earliest example of a science fiction narrative” (1), emphasizes its role as a subgenre to the Gothic tradition: “Shelley is moving away from the realms of traditional Gothic and into something new, and that is the beginnings of Gothic science fiction, a sub-genre of the Gothic” (2). This swerve from the traditional Gothic is strongly signified by the eight-foot tall creature as an artificial being that begins to move away from traditional alchemical notions of homunculi, and one that approaches more modernized representations of robots. Simultaneously Gothic and science fiction, the force of the text’s 18 A Routledge sourcebook, entitled Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; A Sourcebook (2002), contains excerpts from numerous articles classified under different section headings from “Body, Medicine and Science”, “Commodity Culture and Social Structure”, “Gender and Queer Theories”, “Genre, Literary Form and Literary History”, “Language and Psyche” and “Race, Colonialism and Orientalism”. 19 Isaac Asimov agreed with Brian W. Aldiss that Frankenstein constituted “the first genuine science fiction novel” (Blackford 9). Despite many earlier examples of science fiction narratives, Blackford similarly states: “This seems, I submit, as plausible a starting point as any” (9). However, one should keep in mind, as Blackford also states, that “no definition of the genre commands universal scholarly assent” (9). Cp. Paul Alkon’s observation: “Others agree with Darko Suvin’s suggestion that Gulliver’s Travels, not Frankenstein, is science fiction’s very first archetype” (12). 77 presentation of the creature is derived from its chimeric constitution of various ambivalences and anxieties, its ability to enforce and subvert rational order, the progress of technology and the subjective identity formations. Indeed, Robert Miles’s response to the question of ‘what is Gothic’ offers a perspective of fragmentary subjectivity in the case of the creature: “My short answer is that the Gothic is a discursive site, a carnivalesque mode for representations of the fragmented subject” (4). As such, the novel also has strong sociological dimensions which Kakoudaki explores in more detail. Discussing the creature’s artificial birth, Kakoudaki argues that such a trope has the effect of comingling the ontological and social dimensions of the creature’s subjectivity: “the monster cannot be complacent about the fact of life and the fact of social rejection, as the two mysteries, one ontological and the other social or political, are irrevocably intertwined for him” (39). The aim of this chapter is not to uncover the origins of science fiction as a genre, but rather to establish a literary tradition between Frankenstein, literary robots, the social environment and the theme of altruism. This dissertation sees Shelley’s novel as the first modern robotic science fiction narrative, as it represents the moment when two separate discourses – science fiction and robots as cultural objects – came together in a single narrative. In the words of Michael Szollosy, in “Freud, Frankenstein and Our Fear of Robots” (2017): “Frankenstein and his monster emerge, if not at the very beginning, at a specific point very early in our modern (mis)understanding of robots” (434). Szollosy explains that the novel established a familiar trope: “Frankenstein, like Faust, is a victim of hubris and demonstrates that human endeavor, science and technology, whatever their noble intentions, inevitably create a monster that will gain autonomy and return to haunt us” (434). This trope, according to Szollosy, set the standard for subsequent works of robotic fiction: “We see this fundamental archetype time and again in our fantasies of monstrous robots” (434). Discussing Frankenstein, Warrick makes a similar observation: “These issues appear again and again in modern SF about robots and computer” (38-9). Arguably the most famous robotic science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, is remembered for his Three Laws of Robotics (discussed below), but he also coined the phrase “the Frankenstein complex”, which he used as a means with which to critique a particular 78 trope or cliché in robotic science fiction (Asimov “Introduction” 5). In this way Asimov definitively sealed the connection between robotic science fiction and Shelley’s novel. This chapter is divided into three subsections. The first examines the relationship between Asimov’s Frankenstein complex and the broader cultural myth of Frankenstein in the popular imagination which serves to illustrate its longstanding influence. The second subsection turns to the role of alchemy in Shelley’s text in order to examine how the creature is manufactured. The last subsection turns to the theme of altruism as it is adopted and treated in the novel. The Frankenstein Complex and Boris Karloff’s Monster Asimov defines his Frankenstein complex as a cliché in robotic fiction that deals with (or is derived from) technophobia. According to Asimov, writing in 1984,20 technophobia operates “against change and technological advantage generally, [and] operate[s] against robots in particular” (“Introduction” 4). Asimov explains that because robots are “usually visualized as at least vaguely human in shape” or “pseudo human beings”, their creation “by a human inventor is therefore perceived as an imitation of the creation of humanity by God” (“Introduction” 4). Given that robots function as pseudo-human beings, from religious perspectives, such forms of creation inevitably come to be seen as blasphemous (Asimov “Introduction” 5). As a result, Asimov argues, a particular cliché developed, namely a didactic moral that “there are some things man was not meant to know”, a view rejected by Asimov: “as though it were perfectly all right for human beings to learn a thousand ways of ending life through every gradation of pain, misery, and unspeakable humiliation, but wrong and sinful to learn even one new way of creating life” (“Introduction” 5). The first work of fiction to impart this moral, according to Asimov, is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “Victor Frankenstein creates the Monster, who turns on Frankenstein and those he loves, and kills them. […] The success of Frankenstein was such that the basic plot of ‘man creates robot; robot kills man’ was repeated over 20 Originally stated in 1964 in an introduction to a collection of his works, entitled The Rest of the Robots (1964). His arguments were repeated and elaborated in another introduction to a 1984 collection of robotic short stories, entitled Machines That Think (1984), also published under the title War with the Robots (1984). 79 and over again in uncounted numbers of science fiction stories” (“Introduction” 5). Asimov takes credit for personally helping to destroy that cliché through his own fiction: “It became one of the more unbearable clichés in the field (one that I successfully fought and destroyed, I am proud to say, with the establishment of my ‘Three Laws of Robotics’” (“Introduction” 5). Asimov is not claiming that his robotic science fiction is somehow superior to Shelley’s novel, but merely that his Three Laws helped to innovate and nudge the genre of robotic science fiction in new directions. In his view, this particular trope/cliché “has helped exacerbate this particular variety of technophobia, the fear of technological advance as ‘blasphemy,’ in connection with robots, and the consequent fear of robots above and beyond other products of technology. It is why I referred to such fear in my stories as the ‘Frankenstein complex’” (“Introduction” 5). Asimov also explains that due to the popularity of the “story of Frankenstein”, he “never felt the need to define the meaning of the term in any of [his] stories” (5-6). For Asimov, then, the Frankenstein complex as discussed in 1984 is a combination of technophobia aimed at robots, as well as a pervasive cliché in robotic science fiction of having robots revolt against their makers. However, the Frankenstein complex is not only a reference to Shelley’s novel, but also the broader myth of Frankenstein, as he explains: “People who know of the Monster only from the movie do not fully appreciate that the Monster [in Shelley’s text] was rather movingly virtuous and became a killer only because he was unbearably ill-treated” (“Introduction” 5). In addition, Asimov claims that the success and popularity of the story of Frankenstein can be attributed more to the film than the novel: “Such is the power of the story of Frankenstein […] thanks even more to the movie than to the book” (“Introduction” 5). However, Asimov never clarifies which film he has mind. The assumption, in this dissertation, is that Asimov is referring to the 1931 Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, directed by James Whale.

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