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Scientific breakthroughs inspire science fiction. But that door swings both ways, because popular science fiction and its reception also affect scientific research and its reputation, as the general public is more likely to read a science fiction novel or see a movie than to discuss the merits of the latest genetic studies. The most popular science fiction comes from someone who follows science and thinks, “What could possibly go wrong?” The classic example is the group of young educated writers who got together around the time Luigi Galvani was getting publicity for his experiments in animating frog muscles with electricity.
While the group of friends at Lake Geneva imagined the ghoulish possibilities of galvanism, one young woman was so horrified by the idea of reanimating corpses that she subsequently had a dream in which she saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.” This dream inspired her to write a horror story in which a “mad scientist” creates a monster out of dead body parts, a monster that wreaks havoc and kills innocents. The author is Mary Shelley. The story, of course, is Frankenstein. Considered by many to be the first true work of science fiction, it was certainly the world’s first cautionary tale about the perils of science messing around with life.
There are other examples in a post at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Author Laura H. Kahn wants to encourage scientists to write more fiction, so that stories about science could be more informative, and maybe a little less horrifying. Link -Thanks, Janice!
This funky Frankenstein sculpture looks good enough to eat! Created as part of the It’s Alive Project, this is one of 80 busts created by different artists striving to show the monster in a different light. Look out for the FrankenBieber, and the hilarious FrankenSpock!
This neat, albeit gory, illustration by Chris Schweizer shows Dr. Frankenstein hard at work on his monster. Pray he gets it right this time!
Link –via ComicsAlliance
The following article is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John’ Bathroom Reader.
The original Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t Boris Karloff -it was (believe it or not) a character created by a 19-year-old author named Mary Shelley …more than 190 years ago.
BACKGROUND
In the summer of 1816, 19-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her 24-year-old husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Switzerland “It proved a wet, uncongenial summer,” she wrote some 15 years later, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.”
To pass the time, the Shelleys and their neighbors -28-year-old Lord Byron, his 23-year-old personal physician, and his 18-year-old lover- read German ghost stories aloud. They enjoyed it so much that one day, Byron announced, “We will each write a ghost story.” Everyone agreed, but apparently the poets, unaccustomed to prose writing, couldn’t come up with anything very scary.
Mary was determined to do better. “I busied myself to think of a story,” she recalled, “One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror.” Yet she couldn’t come up with anything. Every morning, her companions asked: “Have you thought of a story?” “And each morning,” she wrote later, “I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.”
A FLASH OF INSPIRATION
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
One evening, Mary sat by the fireplace, listening to her husband and Byron discuss the possibility of reanimating a corpse with electricity, giving it what they called “vital warmth.”
The discussion finally ended well after midnight, and Shelley retired. But Mary, “transfixed in speculation,” couldn’t sleep.
“When I placed my head on the pillow,” she recalled, “I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arouse in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw -with shut eyes but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together …I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half-vital motion.
“Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of light which he had communicated would fade; that this thing would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery eyes…”
THE PERFECT HORROR STORY
At this point, Mary opened her eyes in terror -so frightened that she needed reassurance it had all just been her imagination. She gazed around the room, but just couldn’t shake the image of “my hideous phantom.” Finally, to take her mind off the creature, she went back to the ghost story she’d been trying to compose all week. “If only I could contrive one,” she thought, “that would frighten people as I myself had been frightened that night!” Then she realized that her vision was, in fact, the story she’d been reaching for.
As she recounted: “Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. ‘I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.’ On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began the day with the words, ‘It was on a dreary night in November,’ making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.”
THE NOVEL
The first version of Frankenstein was a short story. But Mary’s husband encouraged her to develop it further, and she eventually turned it into a novel. It was published anonymously in three parts in 1818. “Mary,” notes one critic, “did not think it important enough to sign her name to the book… And since her husband wrote the book’s preface, people assumed he had written the rest of the book as well… It was not until a later edition of Frankenstein that the book was revealed as the work of a young girl.”
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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
Meaghan Mountford shows you step-by-step how to make your own frightening Frankenstein Marshmallow Pops for a ghoulishly glorious Halloween treat! Any recipe that calls for “candy eyes” is alright by me. Can you get those at the corner market? Link -via Laughing Squid
Frankenstein Backpack Buddy – $39.95
Are you a young mad scientist looking for the perfect way to tote your Halloween loot? You need the Frankenstein Backpack Buddy from the NeatoShop. Who knew a hideous creature could be so darn cute and useful?
More Backpack Buddy styles available.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Bags & Backpacks!
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Well, in his defense, he is an outstanding scientist. Not many doctors can reanimate the dead. Oh, and he has other qualifications:
Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital has hired a new interim, part-time chief medical officer, a board-certified physician in the areas of pulmonology and internal medicine with a track record for evaluating hospital standards at the national level.
Link via The Agitator
Jeremy Woods created a modern title sequence for the 1931 film Frankenstein. I think it works quite well! -Thanks, Jeremy!
Lowbrow artist Mike Bell made this fanciful depiction of the Bride of Frankenstein in imitation of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. As you can see at artist’s website, the Bride is a favorite motif of Bell.
Link via Nerdcore | Artist’s Website (warning: sound)
Monster Plushies – $11.95
Move over cute, lovable plushies – here comes gruesomely cute, loveable monster plushies from the NeatoShop. They’re the perfect gift for your fellow B movie lovers: Link | More Fun and Unusual Plush Toys
Comments Off Edison Studios made the first movie version of Frankenstein in 1910. It was released 100 years ago last week. Frankensteinia has details and the story of how the film was lost and found a half-century later. Link -via Metafilter
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Bunchland Magazine, a digital magazine that features awesome and
creative families from all over the world, received this submission for
our food section, called Munchland. In this section, families send us
videos of themselves cooking or talking about food.
This video, entitled The Dessert of Frankenstein, came
from dad Eric Woolfe, a brilliant playwright/actor who creates
deliciously macabre horror-inspired puppet shows.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Factorbot.
Screenwriter John Cox posted a guest blog at Frankensteinia about his search for the site of the only location shot in the 1931 movie Frankenstein.
Where did Universal shoot the famous Maria meets the Monster scene in the classic 1931 Frankenstein? For years I could never get a straight answer. Some claimed it was shot on the Universal backlot along with the rest of the movie. But it’s clear from the size of the lake and the rugged mountains in the distance that this can’t be true.
Cox found that the scene was filmed at Malibou Lake and set off to find the exact location of the scene, despite the knowledge that it was now in private hands, and that after almost 80 years, it might not look the same. But he was surprised at what he found! Link -via Metafilter
