Title: The Banker of Ingolstadt
Author: Rhys Hughes
Date of First Publication: 2000
Place of Publication: Hideous Progeny
Type: Short story
Characters: No Character
Themes: ANDROID; POSTHUMAN; MAD SCIENTISTS/MONSTERS; RETRO SF
Critical Summary: “The Banker of Ingolstadt” begins with a stuffy bank employee trying his damnedest to deny a woman a student account on the grounds of her sex as well as the improbability of her being a student. The woman, Mina, is determined to deposit her grant check and prove that she is a student under Dr. Waldman, the man who taught Victor Frankenstein chemistry back before his horrendous experiment came to fruition. The banker agrees to take Mina’s check in a private arrangement, then attempts to con her out of her money. Desperate, Mina begs the banker to give her even something so small as a guinea, and he complies after an internal struggle between his position and his sympathies. Mina, visibly disappointed by his concession, proceeds to pull tools from her human-flesh handbag and dismantle him. We then learn that this conversation was a test for Mina’s latest reanimated body, which both she and her creation failed. Dr. Waldman emerges from a wing of the bank façade and reassures Mina that her “Utterly Evil Banker” experiment will indeed be a success, as she is his greatest pupil (surpassing even Victor Frankenstein).
It’s obvious from the first page of Hughes’ short story that Victor’s legacy lives on in that “Sociology and Reanimation” have a continued existence at Ingolstadt University. The name-dropping of not just Victor but his favorite instructor adds solidity to this work’s canon and credibility. Waldman’s reveal at the end is a twist that works as a reward to those who know the characters well. Prior knowledge lends a horror to the idea of students praising Victor’s perversion of nature with the very same doctor leading the troops like a proverbial messiah. Victor in Shelley’s Frankenstein told his tale as a warning of the consequences of playing God, but Hughes imagined a world where scientists instead marveled at Frankenstein’s creation and aimed to replicate his resurrection. The “mad scientist”, however, is the point where the script is truly flipped—it happens to be an extraordinarily gifted woman (who is also the first female student at Ingolstadt University) building upon the groundwork laid by Victor’s infamous experiment. She wants her “Utterly Evil Banker” to act as the catalyst for mad scientist eugenics—that is, to weed out the weak of constitutions and make way for those who are wholly capable of adapting with the evolving world. Shelley’s references to gore in her 1818 work are subtle yet spine-tingling; her descriptions of the creature’s paper-thin flesh barely covering the veins is sublimely terrifying. Inversely, Hughes goes for the gross-out yet also ties in prose to soften the blow—his details regarding the banker vomiting blood into Mina’s unbuttoned waist-tied bodice now overflowing with his bodily fluids is disturbing yet oddly gives off an intense sexual energy that is completely unexpected. The final ping of horror is Mina’s dream for her creature to breed more “evil banker” spawn and thereby populate the world with callous men crushing the dreams of the weak. It is the exact opposite of Victor’s final wish, and saying that he would be rolling in his grave upon learning of the consequences of his experiment would be a severe understatement.
Administrative Notes: Kendall O’Key, CSUF; Lee Koehler, CSUF (editing)