Title: Completist Heaven
Author: Kim Newman
Date of First Publication: 1994
Place of Publication: The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein
Type: Short Story
Characters: No Character
Themes: BYRONIC HERO
Critical Summary: The short story “Completist Heaven” is about a man who watches television all day and writes down everything he watches. He is determined to only watch new titles no matter how strange they may seem. In this particular moment in his life he is going over the shows and movies with “Frankenstein” in the title. They all vary and are extremely strange, and some even are poorly made, yet the man continues to watch all of these determinately. He calls this his Completist Heaven as he is able to find everything there is to possibly know about any television show or movie ever created. This project he works on is his own creation in itself. It references the original Frankenstein as the shows he watches bring multiple versions of it together. By the end of the story, the man seems to be driven insane by how much television consumption he has had. Yet, who is to say he was not already insane at the beginning of this short story? His mental health at least seemed understandable at the beginning of the story, and towards the end his ideas become wrapped up in themselves and confusing. His sentences can barely form a basic meaning at the very end of the story, as the television seems to have corrupted his mind into only thinking like a television. As this man sees his project as a monster, he does not seem to be able to stop himself from creating it. With the references to Frankenstein it is easy to see how he relates himself to Dr. Frankenstein as a creator falling into insanity. Half way through the story he does not really know why he continues to create this monster, and yet he can not stop. By the end of the story he is driven completely mad by his own creation just like Dr. Frankenstein, as they both have no real reason in creating these, other than knowing that they can and finding the means of doing it, no matter what the risks are.
As some of his shows bleed into others in relation to each other, the man begins to lose his own mental state in his work, and almost becomes the project himself. This results to the ending when the only thing he can do is to quote what he hears from the television, as that is all the information going into his brain, while all other information is being pushed out, even simple things such as talking, moving and eating. he can only focus on one thing, watching television. Like the doctor, he becomes fully enwrapped in his work for no real excusable reason. However, in this story there is no correlation to the creation and therefore no sympathy to be had for what is being created. If anything this is the wanderings of a mad man’s mind moving down into the brink of insanity as he can only concentrate on his work. The only relation this story has to the original Frankenstein story is how the man seems to relate to the doctor as he makes his creation and descends into madness because of it.
Administrative Notes: Sarah Vitug, CSUF; Dr. David Sandner, CSUF (editing)