For the monster itself, see Frankenstein's monster. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. First published in London in 1818 (but more often read in the revised third edition of 1831), it is a Gothic novel infused with the spirit of the Romantic movement. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. Many distinguished authors, such as Brian Aldiss, claim that it is the very first science fiction novel. Contents 1 Plot synopsis 2 Genesis 3 Publication 4 The name of the creature 5 Title origin 6 Themes 7 Film adaptations 7.1 Trivia 7.2 Parodies and satires 8 Television adaptations 9 Other adaptations 9.1 Radio 9.2 Books and comic books 9.3 Videogames 10 Influence 11 See also 12 Further reading 13 References Plot synopsis Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. "It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs." The novel opens with Captain Walton on a ship sailing north of the Arctic Circle. Walton's ship becomes ice-bound, and as he contemplates his isolation and paralysis, he spots a figure traveling across the ice on a dog sledge. This is Victor Frankenstein's creature. Soon after he sees the ill Victor Frankenstein himself and invites him onto his boat. The narrative of Walton is a frame narrative that allows for the story of Victor to be related. At the same time, Walton's predicament is symbolically appropriate for Victor's tale of displaced passion and brutalism. Victor takes over telling the story here. Curious and intelligent from a young age, he is self taught by masters of Medieval alchemy, reading such authors as Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus, and shunning modern Enlightenment teachings of natural science (see also Romanticism and the Middle Ages). He leaves his beloved family in Geneva, Switzerland to study in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany where he is first introduced to modern science. In a moment of inspiration, combining his new found knowledge of natural science with that of the alchemy dreams of his old masters, Victor discovers the means by which inanimate matter can be imbued with life. With great drive and fervor, he sets about constructing a creature — perhaps intended as a companion — through means which Shelley refers to only ambiguously. Subsequent visual interpretations of the story have included the creation of Frankenstein's monster through alchemy, by the piecing together of corpses, or a combination of the two. He intends the creature to be beautiful, but when the creature awakens, Victor is disgusted. It has yellow, watery eyes, translucent skin, and is of an abominable size. Victor finds this revolting and although the creature expressed him no harm (in fact it grins at him and reaches his hands out innocently to his creator), Victor runs out of the room in terror whereupon the creature disappears. Overwork causes Victor to take ill for several months. After recovering, in about a year's time, he receives a letter from home informing him of the murder of his youngest brother William. He departs for Switzerland at once. Near Geneva, Victor catches a glimpse of the creature in a thunderstorm among the rocky boulders of the mountains, and is convinced it killed William. Upon arriving home he finds Justine, the family's beloved maid, framed for the murder. Despite Victor's feelings of overwhelming guilt, he does not tell anyone about his horrid creation and Justine is convicted and executed. To recover from the ordeal, Victor goes hiking into the mountains where he encounters his "cursed creation" again, this time atop a glacier. The creature converses with Victor and tells him his story, speaking in strikingly eloquent language. He describes his feelings first of confusion, then rejection and hate. He explains how he learned to talk by studying a poor peasant family through a crack in the wall. He performs in secret many kind deeds for this family, but in the end, they drive him away when they see his appearance. He gets the same response from any human who sees him. The creature confesses that it was indeed he who killed William and framed Justine, and that he did so out of revenge. But now, the creature only wants one thing; he begs Victor to create a female companion for him so that he may have companionship. At first, Victor agrees, but later, he tears up the half-made companion in disgust and madness. In retribution, the creature kills Clerval, Victor's best friend. On Victor's wedding night, the creature kills his wife. Victor now becomes the hunter: he pursues the creature into the Arctic ice, though in vain. Near exhaustion, he is stranded when an iceberg breaks away, carrying him out into the ocean. At that moment, Captain Walton's ship arrives and he is rescued. Walton assumes the narration again, describing a temporary recovery in Victor's health, allowing him to relate his extraordinary story. However Victor's health soon fails, and he dies. Unable to convince his shipmates to continue north and bereft the charismatic Frankenstein, Walton is forced to turn back towards England under the threat of mutiny. Finally, the creature boards the ship and finds Victor dead, and greatly laments what he has done to his maker. He vows to commit suicide by burning himself on a funeral pyre, exulting in the agony of the flames, and leaves the ship by leaping through the cabin window to an ice raft. Genesis "How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?" During the snowy summer of 1816, the "Year Without A Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, the then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, age 19, and her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor vacation activities they had planned, so after reading Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote the scariest tale. Mary conceived an idea after she fell into a waking dream or nightmare during which she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." This was the germ of Frankenstein. Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus, the Frankenstein and vampire themes were created from that single circumstance. Publication Mary Shelley completed her writing in May 1817, and Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was first published on 1 January 1818 by the small London publishing house of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones. It was issued anonymously, with a Preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th century first editions. The novel had been previously rejected by Percy Bysshe Shelley's publisher Charles Ollier and by Byron's publisher John Murray. Critical reception of the book was mostly unfavourable, compounded by confused speculation as to the identity of the author, which was not well disguised. Walter Scott wrote that "Upon the whole, the work impresses us with a high idea of the author's original genius and happy power of expression", but most reviewers thought it "a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity" (Quarterly Review). Despite the reviews, Frankenstein achieved an almost immediate popular success. It became widely known especially through melodramatic theatrical adaptations – Mary Shelley saw a production of Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein, a play by Richard Brinsley Peake in 1823. A French translation appeared as early as 1821 (Frankenstein: ou le Prométhée Moderne, translated by Jules Saladin). The second edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker) and this time credited Mary Shelley as the author. On 31 October 1831 the first "popular" edition in one volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley. This edition was quite heavily revised by Mary Shelley, and included a new longer Preface by her, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition tends to be the one most widely read now, although editions containing the original 1818 text are still being published. The revised edition was changed in several significant ways: any indication that Frankenstein's monster was created by vice was removed and the text details a benevolent creator who creates the monster merely for the purposes of science. Suggestions of an incestuous relationship between Victor and Elizabeth are also removed by making Elizabeth an adopted child of the Frankenstein's. The name of the creature The creature – "my hideous progeny" – was not given a name by Mary Shelley, and is only referred to as "The Monster", "The Creature" and "Frankenstein's Monster", or as Victor Frankenstein called his creation more commonly, "The Fiend." After the release of James Whale's popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the filmgoing public immediately began speaking of the monster itself as Frankenstein. A reference to this occurs in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The creature refers to itself throughout the book as "hideous wretch". Some justify the naming of the Creature as "Frankenstein" by pointing out that the Creature is, so to speak, Frankenstein's offspring. Title origin Mary Shelly always maintained, in a claim to originality, that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision. Thus, where the name came from, and what it means, has been a source of speculation and critical analysis. Literally the name "Frankenstein" means "the stone of the Franks" in German. Frankenstein is also the former name of Ząbkowice Śląskie, a city in Silesia and the historical home of the Frankenstein family. Radu Florescu in his In Search of Frankenstein made an argument that Percy and Mary Shelly visited Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt along the Rhine, but that Mary suppressed mentioning this visit to maintain her claim of originality. However this theory is not without critics, Leonard Wolf calls it an "unconvincing.. conspiracy theory" (Wolf, p.20). Another theory states that one of the members of the Frankenstein family met with Mary Shelley during her European trip and made a deep impression on her, so she decided to name a character in her novel after him. However this is not well supported and conflicts with her public claim to originality in a dream-vision. One interpretation of the character named Victor Frankenstein can be viewed from the company that Mary Shelley kept in her well-educated circle of high-society thinkers. Mary was aware of the occult-sciences of her time (indeed a main theme of the book). "Frank" in German can translate into "free man". "Stein" is a variation of "stone". "Free man of stone" could become "free mason" if one took an unorthodox approach. Thus "Victory of the free masons" is one interpretation. The setting of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Ingolstadt, Germany might further support this idea. Another more likely interpretation of the name Victor derives from the poem Paradise Lost by Milton, which was a great influence on Shelly. Indeed a quotation from Paradise Lost is found on the opening page of the book. Satan, throughout the poem, refers frequently to God as "the Victor". The Modern Prometheus is the sub-title. Prometheus was the Greek bringer of fire who took fire from heaven and gave it man. Zeus then punished Prometheus by fixing him to a rock and each day an eagle came to devour his liver. This can be interpreted in a number of ways. For Mary Shelly on a personal level, Prometheus was not a hero but a devil, who she blamed for bringing fire to man and thereby seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat (fire brought cooking which brought hunting and killing) (Wolf, p.20). For Romance era artists in general, Prometheus' gift to man compared with the two great utopian promises of the 18th century: the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, containing both great promise and potentially unknown horrors. Themes The novel is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus," and this suggests the book's major inspiration, (note that some modern publishings of the work now drop the subtitle, mentioning it only in an introductionary section). Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley would soon write Prometheus Unbound. In addition, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. This poem was one of the most popular among young poets of the time, and Shelley even allows the monster himself to read it. Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical, and was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic change. Behind Frankenstein's experiments is the search for ultimate power or godhood: what greater power could there be than the act of creation of life? Frankenstein and his utter disregard for the human and animal remains gathered in his pursuit of power can be taken as symbolic of the rampant forces of laissez-faire capitalism extant at the time and their basic disregard for human dignity. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator: a clear message that irresponsible uses of technologies can have unconsidered consequences. The town that gave the book its name was the former site of a silver and gold mine that released life-threatening toxins into the air. According to another theory, the name was taken from Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel made experiments with human bodies. On her journey to Switzerland Mary Shelley stayed nearby. In the 1931 film "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff plays the part of the Creature, and the scientist, played by Colin Clive, is renamed Henry Frankenstein. Shelley's character Henry Clerval does not appear in the film at all, which eliminates Victor's foil altogether. Changing the doctor's name from Victor also eliminates some original irony, inasmuch as the novel ends after exposing the doctor's utter failure and destruction. Since this film, the horror culture has confused modern audiences into replacing the scientist's name with his freakish creation. This event has stimulated much conversation in the literary criticism of Shelley's work. Attributing the name of the scientist to his creation reveals a deeper connection between the two, especially when the scientist realizes the great danger that the creation presents to himself and to the world. One popular feminist critique of the novel Frankenstein views the tale as a journey of pregnancy and the common fears of women in Shelley's day of frequent stillborn births and maternal deaths due to complications in delivery. Mary Shelley experienced the horrors of a stillborn birth the prior year. Victor Frankenstein is often fearful of the release of the Monster from his control, when it is free to act independently in the world and affect it for better or worse. Also, during much of the novel Victor fears the creature's desire to destroy him by killing everyone and everything most dear to him. Representing a minority opinion, Arthur Belefant in his 116-page book, Frankenstein, the Man and the Monster (1999, ISBN 0962955582) contends that Mary Shelley's intent was for the reader to understand that the Creature never existed, and Victor Frankenstein committed the three murders. In this interpretation, the story is a study of the moral degradation of Victor, and the "science-fiction" aspects of the story are Victor's imagination. Note that according to the novel, Victor has a clear alibi for at least one of the murders committed by the Monster – it is proved that he was on a different island at the time of the killing. Victor Frankenstein studied in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt. The medical department was famous up to the year 1800, when it was closed. Alchemy was a very popular topic in Shelley's world. In fact, it was becoming an acceptable idea that humanity could infuse the spark of life into a non-living thing (Luigi Galvani's experiments, for example). The scientific world just after the Industrial Revolution was delving into the unknown, and limitless possibilities also caused fear and apprehension for many as to the consequences of such horrific possibilities. The book also discusses the ethics of creating life and contains innumerable biblical allusions in this context. Film adaptations 1910: The first film adaptation of the tale, Frankenstein, was done by Edison Studios in 1910. It was produced by Thomas Edison and starred Charles Ogle as the Monster. For many years this film was believed lost until a print was discovered in the 1980s. This was followed soon after by another adaptation entitled Life Without Soul and at least one European film version. 1931 - 1948: The most famous adaptation of the story, 1931's Frankenstein, was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Its first sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), was also directed by Whale and is considered by many to contain the most spectacular laboratory scene of any of the series. Son of Frankenstein followed in 1939. Later efforts by Universal rapidly degenerated into farce, culminating in the outright comedy Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein. The Universal films in which The Monster appears (and the actor who played him) are: Frankenstein (1931 - Boris Karloff; made during the *Pre-Code era) Bride of Frankenstein (1935 - Karloff) Son of Frankenstein (1939 - Karloff) The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942 - Lon Chaney Jr.) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943 - Bela Lugosi with stuntman Eddie *Parker in some scenes including a close-up) House of Frankenstein (1944 - Glenn Strange) House of Dracula (1945 - Strange) Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948 - Strange). This film is usually referred to as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein but the title given above is its official title according to the Internet Movie Database. 1957- 1974: In Great Britain, a long-running series by Hammer Films focused on the character of Dr. Frankenstein (usually played by Peter Cushing) rather than his monsters. Peter Cushing played Dr. Frankenstein in all of the films except for Horror of Frankenstein in which the character was played by Ralph Bates. Cushing also played a Frankenstein creation in Revenge of Frankenstein. David Prowse played two different Monsters. The Hammer Films series (and the actor playing The Monster) consisted of: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 - Christopher Lee) The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958 - two Monsters: Michael Gwynn and Peter Cushing) The Evil of Frankenstein (1964 - Kiwi Kingston) Frankenstein Created Woman (1967 - Susan Denberg) Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969 - Freddie Jones) The Horror of Frankenstein (1970 - David Prowse) Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974 - Prowse) 1958: Another wildly differing adaptation is the 1958 film Frankenstein 1970, which focuses on the themes of nuclear power, impotence, and the film industry. Boris Karloff stars as Dr. Frankenstein, who harvests the bodies of actors to create a clone of himself using his nuclear-powered laboratory. His intention is to have this clone carry on his genes into future generations. 1965: An extremely tangential adaptation is Ishiro Honda's 1965 tokusatsu kaiju film Frankenstein Conquers the World (Furankenshutain tai Chitei Kaijû Baragon), produced by Toho Company Ltd. The film's prologue is set in World War II, the monster's heart is stolen by Nazis from the laboratory of Dr. Reisendorf in war-torn Frankfurt, and taken to Imperial Japan. Immortal, the heart survives the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and is eaten by a savage child survivor . . . and after discovered by scientists in Present Day Japan, he feeds on protein, eventually growing into a giant humanoid monster that breaks loose and battles the subterranean monster Baragon, which was destroying villages and devouring people and animals. 1966: The film, War of the Gargantuas (Furankenshutain no Kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira), also directed by Honda, is a sequel to the above film (although this is obscured in the US version), with the Frankenstein Monster's severed cells growing into two giant humanoid brother monsters: Sanda (the Brown Gargantua), the strong and gentle monster raised by scientists in his youth, and Gaira (the Green Gargantua), the violent and savage monster who devours humans. The two monsters eventually battle each other in Tokyo. 1985: In this year, the film The Bride was released, an adaptation directed by Franc Roddam. It stars Clancy Brown as the monster, with rocker Sting as Dr. Charles Frankenstein. The plot features the Monster wandering about Europe with a tragic circus midget (David Rappaport) while the Doctor himself engages in a Pygmalion-inspired relationship with a female creation, the eponymous monster's bride played by Jennifer Beals. A love triangle between Doctor, Monster and Bride provides the film's pivotal conflict. 1994: A notable recent adaptation is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) which was directed by Kenneth Branagh who also portrayed Victor Frankenstein. It featured a star cast with Robert De Niro as the monster, Tom Hulce as Henry, John Cleese as Professor Waldman, Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth, and Aidan Quinn as Captain Robert Walton. As its title suggests, Branagh strived for an adaption faithful to Mary Shelley's original novel. In 2004, Universal released Van Helsing. This film was a reinvention of the famous Universal stable of monsters of the 1930s and 1940s. Shuler Hensley plays the Monster who, contrary to usual practice, is directly referred to by the name Frankenstein. The portrayal of the creature in this movie is somewhat close to the portrayal in the book. Trivia Depictions of The Monster have varied widely, from mindless killing machines (as in many of the Hammer films) to the depiction of The Monster as a kind of tragic hero (closest to the Shelley version in behavior) in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Van Helsing. Three films have depicted the genesis of the Frankenstein story in 1816: Gothic directed by Ken Russell (1986), Haunted Summer directed by Ivan Passer (1988) and Remando al viento (English title: Rowing with the Wind) directed by Gonzalo Suárez (1988). Certainly among the goriest Frankenstein movies was Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein from 1973 [1]. This film was paired with Warhol's Blood for Dracula. Both of these movies were satirical in the overabundance of shock and gore. Parodies and satires The films have been parodied, as in Mel Brooks' comedy Young Frankenstein (1974), which borrows heavily from the first three Universal Frankenstein films, including the use of Whale's original laboratory set pieces and the technical contributions of their original creator, Kenneth Strickfaden. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) was a musical parody of the story. In this twisted comedic tale, Dr. Frank N. Furter, creates a creature for his own pleasure and finds he cannot control the creature's lust. Television adaptations Universal produced a television sitcom from 1964 to 1966 for CBS entitled The Munsters with Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster, a Frankenstein's Monster-like character who was the patriarch of a family of kindly monsters including a Dracula-like grandfather (who may actually be Dracula), a vampire wife, and a werewolf son. The Munsters' home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane can still be seen on the Universal Studios' backlot tour at Universal Studios in Universal City, California. In the fall of 2004, two separate adaptations of the Frankenstein story were broadcast on American television, one on the Hallmark Entertainment Network and another which could possibly lead to a television series on the USA Network. Hallmark Entertainment: Frankenstein. One of the more accurate adaptations of Shelly's original book to the screen. USA Network: Frankenstein In the TV show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Frankenstein's monster is a recurring character in the segment "Frankenstein Wastes A Minute of Our Time". As played by Phil Hartman, The Monster was also a popular recurring comedic character on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s, often delivering the line, "fire bad!" Buffy the Vampire Slayer has also faced Frankenstein-like creations; once in season two (a supposedly deceased high-school jock), and most notably in season four, wherein the monster was a stitched-together mass of robot, human, and demon parts named Adam, which turned out to be the main villain for the twenty-two episode season's story arc. In the 1994 animated television series Monster Force Frankenstein's monster alias "Frankenstein" or "the Monster" becomes humans' ally in their desperate fight against evil Creatures of the Night. The children's animated series Arthur series has an episode depicting a renactment of the night the novel was created. Titled Fernkenstein's Monster, it was described as: "Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Fern tells a tale so scary that Arthur and the gang become afraid of her. Can Fern prove her skills as a writer and create a different story that's fun instead of frightening?" The 2000 anime television series Argento Soma draws a large amount of inspiration from Frankenstein. The show's plotline revolves around the event of an ambitious scientist assembling a giant silver creature from scattered components. The giant (aptly nicknamed "Frank") possesses a tender and compassionate nature but has a bizarre and hideous exterior and the potential to inflict death and destruction. Other adaptations Radio In 1938, George Edwards produced a 13-part, 3-hour series for radio. It follows the structure and spirit of novel closely. Books and comic books Marvel Comics' The Monster of Frankstein #1 (Jan. 1973), the premiere of a five-issue adaptation of the novel by writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog. The story of Frankenstein, or to be precise, "Frankenstein's Monster", has formed the basis of many original novels over the years, some of which were considered sequels to Shelley's original work, and some of which were based more upon the character as portrayed in the Universal films. The Monster has also been the subject of many comic book adaptations, ranging from the ridiculous (a 1960s series portraying The Monster as a superhero; see below), to more straightforward interpretations of Shelley's work, such Marvel Comics' The Monster of Frankenstein, the first five issues of which (Jan.-Sept. 1973) contained as a faithful (in spirit at least) retelling of Shelley's tale before transferring The Monster into the present day and pitting him against James Bond-inspired evil organizations. The artist, Mike Ploog, recalled, "I really enjoyed doing Frankensteinvbecause I related to that naive monster wandering around a world he had no knowledge of — an outsider seeing everything through the eyes of a child." [2] In 1940, cartoonist Dick Briefer wrote and drew a Frankenstein's-monster comic book for Prize Publications' Prize Comics, beginning with a standard horrific version, updated to contemporary America, but then in 1945 crafting an acclaimed and well-remembered comedic version that spun-off into his own title, Frankenstein Comics. The series ended with issue #17 (Jan.-Feb. 1949, but was revived as a horror title from #18-33 (March 1952 - Oct.-Nov. 1954). Dell Comics published a superhero version of the character in the comic book series Frankenstein #2-4 (Sept. 1966 - March 1967; issue #1, published Oct. 1964, featured a very loose adaptation/update of the 1931 Universal Pictures movie). 2004 saw the debut of Doc Frankenstein, written by the Andy and Larry Wachowski, the writer-director team of The Matrix), and drawn by Steve Skroce. The book tells the continuing adventures of Frankeinstein's monster, who has since adopted his creator's name and became a hero through the ages. DC comics also has made use of the character. He appeared as a backup feature in the Phantom Stranger comics written by Len Wein. Recently, Grant Morrison revived the character in his Seven Soldiers of Victory project. Here, Frankenstein is a gun-toting assassin battling to prevent the end of the world. Videogames Frankenstein's monster also appears in the Konami video game series Castlevania, numerous times, with its name being "The Monster" or "The Creature", often as a major boss, but sometimes as a regular enemy. Influence Science fiction author Isaac Asimov coined the term Frankenstein complex for the fear of robots. Frankenstein or Franken- is sometimes used for nuancing artificial monstruosity as in "frankenfood", a politically charged name of genetically manipulated foodstuff. In 1971, General Mills Cereals introduced "Franken Berry", a strawberry-flavored corn cereal whose mascot is a variation of the Monster from the 1931 movie. Franken Berry has also appeared in FOX's "Family Guy". In David Brin's science-fiction novel Kiln People, defective golems that become autonomous are called "frankies". See also Frankenstein complex Frankenstein's Monster R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Further reading Belefant, Arthur (1999). Frankenstein, the Man and the Monster. Digital book online, not free. Comroe, Julius H., Jr. (1975). Retrospectroscope article in the American Thoracic Society website. Analyzes errors in the re-telling of Mary Shelley's original plot. Garrett, Martin (2002). Mary Shelley. Lylys, William H. (1975). Mary Shelley, an Annotated Bibliography Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley Wolf, Leonard (2004). The Essential Frankenstein. ISBN 0743498062. The complete original text of Mary Shelley's novel, fully annotated with thousands of facts and legends. References Wikisource has original text related to this article: Frankenstein Free eBook of Frankenstein at Project Gutenberg (omits the prefaces) Free audiobook from LibriVox (without prefaces and edition information) Online Literature Library (w/ the prefaces) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Chronology & Resource Site RSS Version RSS Version of the Text Frankenstein (1931 film) www.frankensteinfilms.com (comprehensive Frankenstein site with information on the most important film versions, comic books and the original novel) Frankenstein: A New Reality! IMDB Don Markstein's Toonpedia: Frankenstein The Grand Comics Database Online Sparknotes for Frankensteinda:Frankenstein Search Term: "Frankenstein" Categories: 1818 books | Horror novels | Science fiction novels | Gothic novels | Romanticism | British novels | Fictional scientists