#319 — Dead or Alive
The Pale Students of Unhallowed Arts
What we can’t learn, we can’t teach to computers
A little over two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote the first science-fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
Surprisingly few people have read it. Millions have, I’m sure, but that’s a tiny fraction of the number who know it. Since the book was first published in 1818, Frankenstein has become a cultural touchstone. It’s unclear exactly when that happened, but it’s possible that it took one hundred years and two men — James Whale and Boris Karloff — to embed the scientist and his monster in our collective consciousness, with their 1931 film.
Both book and film tell the story of a Mad Scientist who Plays God and meddles in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, which of course Goes Horribly Wrong. These are common tropes today, although Mary Shelley may have originated some of them.
It was another fifty years after Karloff starred in Frankenstein before Michael Crichton wrote his sci-fi classic, Jurassic Park. Unlike Mary Shelley, he had the good fortune to write his…
