(Posted to the Transhumanist and Extropian list, May 5, 1996)

Speaking of transhumanist memes in the popular media (and a public tip of the hat to Max More for the great job he did on the "Mysteries of the Millennium" TV special the other night), I spent a wonderful evening last night watching Kenneth Branagh's, "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". (That's a lot of "`s"s!) This makes the third time I've seen this fine film.

Last night's viewing of Branagh's movie prompted me to be amazed yet again at the depth and power of Mary Shelley's novel. Although I haven't read the entire book in over a quarter century, I have remarked many times over the years that (1) *Frankenstein* is the first true work of science fiction of which I am aware (the handful of "trips to the Moon" and utopian novels of the 16th and 17th centuries notwithstanding) and (2) that Mary Shelley managed to capture essentially all of the important themes and textures of science fiction in a single work. I'm prepared to state that *Frankenstein* is THE most important work of science fiction ever written. And here is the absolutely amazing kicker: Mary Shelley wrote the book in a single season, IN 1816 !!!

More importantly for this list, *Frankenstein* is one of the seminal works of transhumanism. As I watched the movie last night I was deeply impressed by the coincidence of Shelley's treatment of transhumanist ideas with many of the threads I've read on the extropian and transhumanist lists. To name just a few, these include: Questions of the nature of mind, identity and memory; The ethical implications of life-extension, human transcendence, fundamental biological engineering, artificial consciousness and scientific creativity and social concerns about that creativity; The nature of superintelligent and supercapable post-human beings, etc. In this regard, I note that the subtitle of her book is "The Modern Prometheus".

Now, I allow that Shelley weaves the fabric of her story with what most people have interpreted as a condemnation of the scientific program to transcend the human condition and defeat death. No doubt it is possible to interpret the story in that fashion. But recall that Shelley set out to write a thriller as well as a novel of ideas and, like Clarke's Hal 9000 in "2001" and "Roy" in "Blade Runner", her transhuman needed a flaw to make the story scary ...

Wondering where she really stood on the subject, I have resolved to re-read her book. Fortunately, the wonders of current technology make this easy, as I have a copy of the book on a CD of "great literature" I bought the other day. I note that she states in the introduction to the book:

>The opinions

>which naturally spring from the ... situation of the hero are by no

>means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor

>is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as

>prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind.

At any rate, I highly recommend the novel and Branagh's film, which takes a minimum of license with the original story and characters and is certainly truer to Shelley's book than any of the horrible films that have borne the name of her novel before.

Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>

http://users.aol.com/gburch1/ (recently revised!)

"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't"

-- W. Shakespeare, _The Tempest_