Frankenstein at 200

1818 original title page

So ... it's the 200th anniversary of the original publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a book she published anonymously (at first); some revisions appeared in 1823 (arranged by her father, William Godwin) and in 1831--a major revision in which Mary toned down a few things. Most of us prefer the 1818 text.

This anniversary has not gone unnoticed. In the current New Yorker (Feb 12 & 19) is a retrospective piece by Jill Lepore ("It's Still Alive: Two Hundred Years of 'Frankenstein'"). (Link to it--the online version has a different title, as you'll see.) And a Facebook friend recently sent me a message that there was an NPR feature about it, as well. (Link to it.) And a bit of Googling will reveal any number of other pieces and tributes and whatever.

Of course, I have an intimate interest in all of this. Back in 2012 I published a YA biography of Mary Shelley on Kindle Direct (The Mother of the Monster: The Life and Times of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; link to it), and for the last ga-jillion years I've been working on a memoir about my fascination with Mary Shelley--Frankenstein Sundae: My Ten-Year Pursuit of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. On this site I serialized that book--a very, very very rough draft of it--a year or so ago, and I am currently still working on the final draft, which I hope to upload to Kindle Direct in the next few months.

What writers know is this: The subject doesn't sit still for you. New books keep coming out; new articles appear. I'm now reading a new book about the science behind Frankenstein (Making the Monster: The Science behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 2018, by Kathryn Harkup),  and another big book awaits me--Christopher Frayling's Frankenstein: The First 200 Years (Reel Art Press, 2017). It's endless, folks.

But I'm trying to read the key things, trying to keep up, though I know that the very moment I publish on Kindle Direct, much of it will soon be out of date. So it goes.

And there is one more odd connection between me and that story ...

Tomorrow I will go down to University Hospitals in Cleveland and have a device installed near my neck, a catheter that will allow physicians to infuse into me my own chemically enhanced (Frankensteined!) T-cells, empowering my body (we hope) to do a better job of fighting this silent cancer-killer that's been eating at me since late in 2004.

For a couple of weeks I will walk around with this medical device as part of my body.

And somewhere ... both Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein are smiling.

Oh, in the next couple of weeks, if you see me? Please--no open flames around me.* I can't be responsible for what will happen!


*Actually, this is not in the novel--just the films.