When you hear the name Frankenstein, what immediately comes to mind?

If you're like most people, you probably picture a large, frightening man with bolts sticking out of his neck, heavy boots, dark clothing and a rather unfortunate habit of walking around with his arms extended in front of him.

You may even hear that familiar sound:  "It's alive!"

For many people, that's Frankenstein.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Boris Karloff's portrayal of the creature in the 1931 film Frankenstein is one of the most recognizable performances in the history of horror movies. The film itself is a classic.

But here at Sci-Fi Junction, I think there's something important that needs to be said:

If the only Frankenstein story you know is the one you've seen in the movies—especially the Boris Karloff version—you are truly missing Mary Shelley's point.

The real story is much deeper.

Much more disturbing.

And, in many ways, much more relevant to us today.

Because Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, isn't simply a story about a scientist who creates a monster.

It's a story about science, ambition, responsibility, loneliness, rejection, revenge and the consequences of creating something we aren't prepared to take responsibility for.

And when you look at it that way, it starts to sound remarkably modern.

A Story Written Nearly 210 Years Ago

Mary Shelley was only 18 years old when she began developing the story that would eventually become Frankenstein.

Think about that.

Eighteen.

Most of us at 18 are trying to figure out what we're going to do with our lives. Mary Shelley was imagining one of the most enduring science-fiction concepts ever written: What happens when a human being uses science to create life?

The book was published anonymously in 1818, although Mary Shelley's name eventually became associated with it.

The world in which she lived was very different from ours.

There were no computers.

No automobiles.

No airplanes.

No modern hospitals.

No genetic engineering.

No artificial intelligence.

No nuclear power.

No space program.

Yet Shelley somehow looked into the scientific possibilities of her era and asked a question that remains with us today:

Just because we can do something, does that mean we should?

That's a very 21st-century question.

Mary Shelley was asking it in the early 19th century.

The Summer That Gave Us Frankenstein

The story of how Frankenstein came into existence is almost as fascinating as the novel itself.

In 1816, Mary Shelley was staying near Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Percy Bysshe Shelley and a group that included the famous poet Lord Byron.

That year became known as the "Year Without a Summer."

Unusual weather had affected much of the Northern Hemisphere following the enormous eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815.

The weather around Lake Geneva was cold and miserable.

So what do a group of young intellectuals do when they're stuck indoors because of bad weather?

They tell ghost stories.

Lord Byron suggested that everyone write a supernatural tale.

Mary Shelley initially struggled to come up with an idea.

Then, according to her later account, she imagined a scientist bringing a dead body—or parts of a body—to life.

That image became the seed of Frankenstein.

But Mary Shelley didn't stop with the idea of a dead body coming back to life.

She asked what would happen afterward.

And that's where her story becomes so much more interesting.

Meet Victor Frankenstein

Here's one of the biggest misunderstandings about the story:

Frankenstein isn't the monster.

Frankenstein is Victor Frankenstein, the young scientist who creates him.

The creature itself is never given a proper name.

That's important.

Victor is fascinated by the mysteries of life and death.

He becomes obsessed with discovering the secret of creating life.

Eventually, he succeeds.

He assembles a body from human remains and manages to bring it to life.

And then something happens that tells us almost everything we need to know about Victor Frankenstein.

He is horrified by what he has created.

Instead of accepting responsibility for his creation, Victor abandons it.

He runs away.

Think about that.

The creature hasn't attacked anybody.

It hasn't murdered anyone.

It hasn't threatened Victor.

It has simply opened its eyes.

And its creator immediately rejects it.

That decision sets almost the entire tragedy in motion.

The Creature Isn't Born Evil

This is where Mary Shelley's story differs dramatically from the image many people have received from the movies.

The creature isn't simply a mindless monster.

He is intelligent.

He learns.

He observes people.

He learns to communicate.

He develops emotions.

And most importantly, he wants to be loved.

That's something the classic movie version doesn't always emphasize.

The creature is born innocent.

He doesn't understand the world.

He doesn't understand why people fear him.

But everywhere he goes, people see his appearance and react with horror.

They run from him.

They attack him.

They reject him.

Imagine being brought into existence with absolutely no understanding of the world—and discovering that everyone who sees you is terrified of you.

What would that do to you?

Mary Shelley asks us to consider that question.

And it becomes one of the most important themes of the novel.

The Monster We Create

Here's where Frankenstein gets really uncomfortable.

At what point does the creature become a monster?

Is it when Victor creates him?

Is it because of his appearance?

Or does he become a monster because of how other people treat him?

Shelley doesn't give us an easy answer.

The creature eventually commits terrible acts.

He murders people.

He seeks revenge against Victor.

He becomes consumed by hatred.

But Shelley makes us understand how he got there.

And that forces us to ask another uncomfortable question:

How much responsibility does Victor Frankenstein bear for what his creation eventually becomes?

After all, Victor created him.

Victor abandoned him.

Victor refused to take responsibility for him.

Victor wouldn't even listen to him when the creature begged for understanding.

The creature becomes monstrous—but Victor's decisions helped create the circumstances that produced that monstrosity.

Boris Karloff's Monster

Now let's talk about Boris Karloff.

Because his Frankenstein creature is wonderful.

The 1931 Universal Pictures film Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, is a landmark of horror cinema.

Karloff's appearance became iconic.

The flat-topped head.

The heavy eyelids.

The scarred face.

The bolts.

The stiff movements.

The groaning voice.

It's an image that became permanently embedded in popular culture.

But if that's the only Frankenstein you've ever experienced, you're missing a tremendous amount of Mary Shelley's story.

The movie's creature is largely presented through the visual language of horror.

Shelley's creature is something else entirely.

He is a thinking, feeling being.

He is capable of learning.

He is capable of reasoning.

He understands rejection.

He understands loneliness.

He understands love.

And eventually, he understands revenge.

That's a much more complicated character than the lumbering figure we usually associate with Halloween.

The Creature's Loneliness

For me, this is one of the most powerful parts of Shelley's novel.

The creature doesn't initially want to destroy humanity.

He wants companionship.

He wants someone who will accept him.

He wants Victor to acknowledge him.

Eventually, he asks Victor to create a companion for him—a female creature who can share his existence.

Victor initially agrees.

Then he becomes terrified of what might happen if he creates another being.

So he destroys the unfinished companion.

The creature is devastated.

And from that point forward, his relationship with Victor becomes a battle of revenge.

The creator and creation become locked together.

Neither can escape the other.

The Real Horror

And perhaps that's the genius of Mary Shelley's story.

The real horror isn't necessarily that Victor Frankenstein creates life.

The real horror is that he creates life and then refuses to accept responsibility for it.

That idea has become increasingly relevant as science and technology have advanced.

Today, we're dealing with questions Shelley could never have imagined.

Artificial intelligence.

Genetic engineering.

Cloning.

Biotechnology.

Robotics.

Autonomous machines.

We can create things that can perform tasks that once seemed impossible.

And every time technology advances, we have to ask:

What happens if something goes wrong?

Who is responsible?

The person who created it?

The person who used it?

The company that sold it?

The scientist who designed it?

The government that permitted it?

Those are essentially Frankenstein questions.

Frankenstein and Artificial Intelligence

This is one reason I think Frankenstein remains such an important science-fiction story.

Consider artificial intelligence.

We are creating increasingly sophisticated systems capable of producing language, analyzing information, generating images, writing computer programs and performing tasks that once required human intelligence.

But what happens when we create something whose capabilities we don't completely understand?

What happens if our creation behaves in ways we didn't anticipate?

And perhaps most importantly:

Are we prepared to accept responsibility for what we create?

Mary Shelley couldn't have imagined AI.

But she certainly understood the danger of creating something before fully considering the consequences.

That's one of the reasons Frankenstein continues to appear whenever humanity confronts a new technological frontier.

The Modern Prometheus

Shelley's original title was Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

The reference to Prometheus is significant.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity.

Fire represents knowledge, power and technology.

But Prometheus pays a terrible price.

Victor Frankenstein is also reaching for knowledge that may be beyond the boundaries humans were prepared to cross.

He wants to understand the secret of life.

He succeeds.

But the knowledge comes with consequences.

Shelley is therefore connecting Victor's experiment to a much older human story:

What happens when we reach for knowledge and power without fully understanding the responsibility that comes with them?

That's not just a horror question.

It's a science-fiction question.

Frankenstein Is Really About Us

That's perhaps the most important point I'd like to make about this remarkable book.

Frankenstein isn't really a story about a monster.

It's a story about human beings.

Victor represents ambition.

The creature represents rejection and loneliness.

Their conflict represents the consequences of refusing to accept responsibility.

And the novel continually asks us to look beyond appearances.

The creature looks frightening.

But Victor—the respectable young scientist—is the person who sets the tragedy in motion.

That's a clever reversal.

And it makes the novel considerably more sophisticated than the popular image of Frankenstein might suggest.

Why You Should Read the Book

If you've never actually read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I would strongly encourage you to give it a try.

Don't worry about the fact that it was written more than two centuries ago.

And don't approach it expecting the Boris Karloff movie.

They are very different experiences.

The book is slower.

It's more philosophical.

It's more interested in the thoughts and emotions of its characters.

And it gives the creature a voice.

That's important.

When the creature speaks for himself, we begin to see him differently.

We may not approve of what he eventually does.

But we understand him.

And understanding a character is very different from simply being frightened by him.

A Foundation of Science Fiction

Here at Sci-Fi Junction, we talk a lot about what makes something science fiction.

Does it have to involve spaceships?

Does it need aliens?

Does there have to be futuristic technology?

I don't think so.

At its heart, science fiction is often about asking:

"What if?"

What if humans could create life?

That's Frankenstein.

What if science could overcome the boundary between life and death?

That's Frankenstein.

What if our scientific ambition gets ahead of our moral responsibility?

That's Frankenstein.

And what if the thing we create becomes something we can no longer control?

Once again:

That's Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley was writing about the future long before most people even understood what modern science fiction could become.

And that's why she deserves to be remembered as one of the genre's pioneers.

Two Centuries Later, We're Still Asking Her Questions

That's the amazing thing about Frankenstein.

More than 200 years after Mary Shelley conceived the story, we're still arguing about the questions she raised.

That's the mark of a great science-fiction story.

Technology changes.

Scientific knowledge changes.

Society changes.

But the fundamental questions remain.

How far should we go?

What should we create?

What are the consequences?

And who is responsible when something goes wrong?

Those questions aren't going away.

In fact, as our technology becomes more powerful, they may become even more important.

So Who Is the Monster?

Perhaps we should end with the question Shelley leaves us wrestling with.

Who is the monster?

Is it the creature?

Or is it Victor Frankenstein?

The obvious answer is the creature.

He commits terrible acts.

But Shelley doesn't allow us to stop there.

She makes us look at Victor.

She makes us look at the creature's childhood—or rather, his lack of one.

She makes us watch him experience rejection.

She makes us listen to his desire for companionship.

She makes us see what happens when someone creates a life and then refuses to take responsibility for it.

And suddenly the word "monster" doesn't seem quite so simple.

That's why, if you've only seen Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, I encourage you to go back to the source.

Enjoy the movie.

Enjoy Karloff's unforgettable performance.

Enjoy the laboratory, the lightning, the castle and all the wonderful atmosphere of classic Universal horror.

But then read Mary Shelley's novel.

Because the movie gives you the monster.

Mary Shelley gives you the tragedy.

And that tragedy is much more frightening.

Not because a scientist created a monster.

But because a human being created something—and then failed to take responsibility for what he had done.

Two hundred years later, we're still doing exactly what Mary Shelley wanted us to do.

We're asking questions.

We're wondering how far science should go.

We're imagining what might happen next.

And we're looking toward the future with both excitement and a little bit of fear.

That's science fiction.

And perhaps that's why Frankenstein still belongs here at Sci-Fi Junction.

After all, Mary Shelley didn't just create one of the world's most famous monsters.

She helped create something else.

She helped create science fiction.