Brian Aldiss: Frankenstein Unbound

This is a very interesting retelling of Mary Shelley's famous teenage work. Mary's achievement was to create not only a superb novel of smart gothic horror with moments of brilliant poetry, but also an immortal myth on the impact of natural science on human culture. Science is here symbolized by Victor Frankenstein's cold approach to knowledge, and his creation of a hideous monster as a result of it. Or as one critic once put it: the monster is himself a symbol for the Science-oriented 20th century as a whole, with its huge potential that ended up, to a great extent, in tragedy.

Science is a strong force in human culture, an unbelievable tool able to reach the most distant goals. But if not properly managed or not properly integrated in the fabric of our civilization, if this huge intellectual force is in the wrong hands or serving misguided interests, then Science might become something rather evil. The scientific enterprise always starts as something theoretically neutral, but it could easily be put at the service of alienation and slavery. Rather than freedom and human growth, as the Enlightenment dreamed. 

This idea can be richly traced in Mary Shelley's book, along with its nice poetry in the frame of a magnetic story. Among the Swiss mountains and lakes, and in the company of Byron, Shelley, Claire and Polidori, one night Mary was to have a most vivid nightmare which would give birth to an unforgettable literary creation. And that nightmare would have the strongest influence in the history of our modern literary culture. Dreams recalled by Freud aside.

English author Brian Aldiss is in love with Mary Shelley. Quite obvious, when reading the novel and his alter ego's impressions, that he would have liked to meet her. And make love to her, like Unbound's main character Joe Bodenland manages to do. In Aldiss's book, we will encounter nearly in flesh and bone some of the characters that marked early nineteenth century English literature: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin (Shelley). Along with William Polidori and Clare Clairmont, in their Geneva exiled household. The story of Mary's creation of the monster was as "literary" as the novel itself, as we all know. And in Aldiss's narration, all is mixed up. Literary and historical beings share the same stage. Along with Shelley, Byron and Mary we have Victor, the monster and the hideous bride that the first is obliged to create for the "demon".  

Frankenstein Unbound is a great read for lovers of the history of literature. But it is also unmistakably a SF novel. Science is here, and its powerful myth. Joe Bodenland, the novel's narrator, lives in 2020 America. Nuclear war technology has not yet destroyed Earth, but it has caused serious "dislocations" in the fabric of Space-Time. The result of which are strange, impossible to foresee, time slips. Just to give an example: at some point, in front of your 21st century home, you may encounter a village (with its people) from the Middle Ages or a piece of 1860s American Civil War. The other side of the river could suddenly appear inhabited (after a Time slide) by a a few square miles of Viking England. Space and Time are definitely out of joint. 

So what is in front of Joe's home at one point? Well it is 1816 Geneva that he encounters before his very windows. Eventually he enters the place at the wheel of his highly techno 2020 car and gets lost in that world. His original home and time being lost after another time slip. And in this strange 1816 he steps into, history and literary creations will share a single reality. Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein, reality and myth are there together in the same Space and the same Time. Yes, blame the Space-Time dislocation caused by nuclear technology in 2020. 

There are some brilliant moments in Frankenstein Unbound. One of the most remarkable ones being the scene of the courtship between Frankenstein's original monster and his just manufactured awful bride. That female monster was created by Victor after the pressure put on him by his nemesis. She comes through the front door out of the house after being reanimated. The monster follows her in lust. They dance, they play. A fascinating and powerful scene is narrated afterwards. 

Some may say that Frankenstein Unbound is not the best novel by the great SF master Brian Aldiss. But it is well worth the reading in any case. Also it deserved a movie version in 1989 by Roger Corman. The narration is told by a single individual, Joe Bodenland, and the rest of the characters are mostly little more than outlined. Even if Aldiss undoubtedly manages to blow some life into Byron, Shelley and Mary, "awakening them from their clay". The novel is another turn of the screw in the myth of the impact of science in our civilization. "Intellect has made our world unsafe for the intellect" is an outstanding idea in these pages. The myth that Mary Shelley first modeled in the realm of literature. 

Throughout the pages of the novel, Bodenland, an intellectual individual and 21st century scientist (a 2020 imagined from 1973 by the way), reflects constantly on the problem. Science and Technology, their fundamental part in the tormented human affairs, their potential and their dangers. The kind of cold cultural approach to Reality that Science demands.  In her novel, Mary Shelley managed to create a myth that has not been exhausted and probably never will.  Frankenstein Unbound has not got its excellence, but it is a clever imaginative narration that follows an old path of fear and concern, one we will never be able to neglect.