RETRO SF—celebrating Frankenstein as sf’s origin; bringing life to antique automata or vivisected bodies, and other out of control experiments by natural philosophers; Steampunk, Edisonades, Victoriana; Gaslamp sf.
Brian Aldiss influentially placed Mary Shelley’s novel as the first sf novel (Billion Year Spree, 1973), marking sf as rising out of the Gothic and taking shape as a literature that examines modernity just as revolutions remade the political landscape in the modern image of capitalism and the promise of democracy (both of which put a new emphasis on the individual, the new human, who buys and votes). Frankenstein is a keystone for any work that reexamines the premises and purposes of the genre of sf itself. We call works “looking backward” into sf’s history “Retro SF” here, but the theme encompasses any 19th-century kind of sf that uses Mary Shelley, her novel, Byron or Ada Lovelace, or makes other connections to Frankenstein. The stories can be called substets of “Victoriana sf” or “Gaslamp Fantasy,” or something else. An important recent term to consider here is, of course, “Steampunk,” a movement that is both a subgenre of sf but also a style that influences many a non-reader of sf engaged instead in cosplay, in style, or even simply in “maker” culture. Steampunk looks to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, but Mary Shelley’s precursor status to the field also makes an important mark. The appearance of Mary Shelley and members of her Circle in works by Steampunk originator Tim Powers, for example, show the strength of the link. Steampunk stories often have built creatures, both clockwork and biologically engineered, with the requisite “mad scientists” nearby, which also links the subgenre directly to Frankenstein. Further, Shelley’s original and many Steampunk stories share a general sense of political opposition to larger, oppressive forces. (See RACE and POLITICS above).
Jeff Nevin’s essay “Steampunk’s 19th Century Roots” from the Steampunk (2008) anthology argues that the subgenre emerges as a counter to the triumphalism of the early 20th-century “Edisonade,” those early sf stories of “gee-whiz” invention. The seemingly unselfconscious imperialism of those stories is also oppositional to Shelley’s work. However, when the Edisonade story betrays a dark side, consciously or unconsciously, in its genocidal conquering of other planets by scientific invention or of, say, a steam man sent by “wonder boys” to kill Native Americans, or the sense that its inventor-protagonists are as much flim-flam men as creators, ruthless and self-serving…or perhaps the word is Byronic…then the Edisonade serves at once to foreshadow Steampunk’s emergence and to look back to Mary Shelley’s warning text, perhaps despite itself.
References:
See RACE and POLITICS.
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/edisonade
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/steampunk