Science Fiction Explored in Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and...

The Legacy of Science Fiction Explored in Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Invisible Man Science Fiction is a branch of literature that explores the possibilities of human scientific advances, especially technological ones. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (published in 1818) was a precursor of the genre which was established by Jules Vernes novels of the late 1800s. HG Wells at the turn of the twentieth century brought more scientific rigour in his works, such as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke are among the most familiar writers of science fiction of the modern era (Cambridge Encyclopaedia, 1994). However, works from an earlier time, Frankenstein, Robert Louis†¦show more content†¦Critics believe that Shelley was reacting to the science of her time when scientists studied the elusive boundary between life and death, through experiments which tried to restore life to persons who had recently died by using electricity (US National Library of Medicine 2002). The model for Frankenstein may be the Scottish scientist James Lind, a school mentor to Shelleys husband; Mary became intrigued with tales of his experiments (SMH 2/5/02). Tim Marshall (1995) gives a different perspective: just after the publication of Frankenstein the science of anatomy aroused controversy because of the infamous case of Burke and Hare [found guilty in Edinburgh of murdering at least 15 people to obtain bodies for dissection]. In 1832, the Anatomy Act granted anatomists access to unclaimed bodies from the workhouses. Before this time, dissection was a feared and hated punishment for murder but the Anatomy Act, according to Richardson (1989, cited in Marshall 1995) successfully redefined poverty as crime. The ensuing publicity made Frankenstein even more popular. Relation between God and humanity is another issue. Joyce Carol Oates (1987) believes that no one in the novel is evil. The universe is emptied of the concept of God and assumptions of good and evil, and this constitutes the novelsShow MoreRelatedVictorian Novel9605 Words   |  39 Pagesframe the period of Victorian literature, it is commonly accepted that it was the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) that saw the novel emerge and flourish, all the more that the 1937 was the year when Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the first major work of fiction. The first readers of both, Dickens and Eliot were not conscious they lived in the ‘Victorian period’. They thought that this was a modern era marked with turbulent transition. However, the most crucial writers of the period grew up in the earlier