Title: The Incubated Girl

Author: Fred T. Jane

Date of First Publication: 1896

Place of Publication: Tower

Type: Novel

Characters: No Character

Themes: ANDROID; BYRONIC HERO; MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; POSTHUMAN; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER

Critical Summary: British Egyptologist Blackburn Zadara discovers an ancient coffin of a Priest of Isis. Inside is a manuscript that explains how to make new life by using chemical substances buried with the manuscript. Zadara performs the experiment and grows a large egg-shaped pod from which hatches a baby girl he names Stella.  Efforts to create any more humanoids fail, but Stella grows up to be preternaturally beautiful. Kept from human contact, she is also selfish and vengeful. In London, she leaves her maker to live with an artist–she absorbs all his talent. Visions of ancient Egypt convince her she is royal, and she acts more haughty than ever. She becomes enraged with animal cruelty and horsewhips the driver and passengers of an omnibus, uses a red-hot poker on a boy abusing a mouse and frees an elephant she rides down Saville Row in a rampage. Stella sets herself up as a goddess of her own religion, and commands her followers to be kind to animals and become vegetarians. Realizing she is soul-less, she absorbs a soul from a smitten clergyman (who turns wild and attempts to rape her). Kidnapped by Zadara, he sets to vivisect her alive to discover the secret of her creation. Stella absorbs his assistant’s soul, who goes wild and attacks Zadara. Both men kill one another, falling on the dead body of Stella.

This wild rise of a story has an original way to bring a humanoid to life, and vivisection at the end, a mad scientist pursuing forbidden ancient knowledge; both creator and creation are Byronic Heroes; Stella is Posthuman in her abilities. As the main character, though she is disdainful of humanity, we sympathize with her.