3.3.1 Species Competing for Survival: Frankenstein
As I mentioned, Brian Aldiss sees Gothic writing as the precursor to science fiction: In the gothic mode, emphasis was placed on the distant and unearthly...Gothic's brooding landscapes, isolated castles, dismal old towns, and mysterious figures can still carry us into an entranced world from which horrid revelations start...The methods of the gothic writers are those of many science-fiction and horror writers today...Other planets make ideal settings for brooding landscapes, isolated castles, dismal old towns, and mysterious alien figures...with science-fiction novels distance lends enchantment. They may locate themselves in distant futures on Earth, on one of the planets of the solar system, or anywhere in our galaxy, even a distant galaxy...The Gothic novel was part of the great Romantic
Movement. Its vogue declined early in the nineteenth century. But terror, mystery, and that delightful horror which Burke connected with the sublime-all of them have remained popular with a great body of readers, and may be discovered, sound of wind and limb, in science fiction to this day. (“On the Origin of Species:
Mary Shelley” 176-8)
For Aldiss, Frankenstein's science fiction credentials begin with the core concept of the book: “...the creation of the nameless monster...an experiment that goes wrong-a prescription to be repeated later, more sensationally, in Amazing Stories and elsewhere” (182). Frankenstein's lack of supernatural forces and reliance on science (however improbable) make it a contender for a science fiction ur-text, as Aldiss argues, but other, more existential concerns also tie the book to modern science fiction and horror. Although plausible arguments can be made for considering other texts as “missing links” for science fiction, Frankenstein's continuing influence does make it a strong contender for a precursor to modern horror and science fiction, both of which will often share the same concerns and explore the same issues, albeit in different settings.
Aldiss notes that “Frankenstein agrees to make a female companion for the monster, subject to certain conditions. When his work is almost finished, Frankenstein pauses, thinking of the 'race of devils' that might be raised up by the union between his two creatures...” (184). This part of the book is influential because it posits the human race not against itself, not against hosts of Heaven and Hell, and not against isolated, solitary supernatural antagonists (such as ghosts), but against another species. This idea will continue to resonate in such diverse works as Alien, Starship Troopers, “The Call of Cthulhu”, and even entire sub-genres such as zombie apocalypse fiction and fiction of the singularity.
The importance of this idea cannot be overstated; apocalypse has always been an option in myth and fiction, but Frankenstein takes the idea of apocalypse away from God or gods and places it in the control of the natural world, where species compete, flourish, and sometimes become extinct. The extinction of the human race figures prominently in another of Mary Shelley's works, The Last Man (1826), the narrative of the lone survivor of a worldwide plague
in the late 21st century. Again, apocalypse in Shelley's work moves from myth to science, while retaining a sense of horror. Although Shelley was writing before Charles Darwin's work, Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, was producing work that would foreshadow the theory of evolution, and “[s]peculations on evolution and natural selection were current at the end of the eighteenth century” (“On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley” 169); evolutionary concepts were part of Mary Shelley's intellectual environment. When Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) was published, it would have even greater influence on speculative fiction of the 19th century.
We can see Darwin's influence (and Frankenstein's) in such category-blurring Victorian- era novels and novellas such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man (1897), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and The Time Machine (1895). Wells' novels and stories in particular tend to include a strong element of horror in their science fiction, echoing the “experiment gone awry” theme of Frankenstein. Jules Verne's works, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), while retaining elements of suspense, demonstrate a more optimistic attitude towards scientific advances. The texts by Wells, Verne, and Stevenson have exerted a tremendous influence on subsequent speculative fiction. Wells and Verne in particular shaped the way science fiction was to be written and approached in the 20th and 21st centuries, and Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), with its battles against Martians with the fate of the human species at stake, set a precedent for all of the alien invasion fiction to come. However, another novel of science and technology would, like Frankenstein, act as a bridge between the intellectual and cultural concerns of two centuries: Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
3.4 19th Century, Part Two: Dracula, Technology, and the Transition from Gothic to Horror
Dracula is, in an important sense, about cutting-edge technology; this aspect of the book tends to be ignored in the many film adaptations (Clemens 205). The novel pits human
technology against the implications of Darwinism. Dracula is personally, physically powerful and has supernatural powers that are yet linked to the natural world: he can turn into a wolf, climb sheer walls, and control weather. He
hails from the prehistoric beginnings of animal life on earth. His incursions into the modern world signify the eruption of the most elemental instinctual drives related to the struggle for species survival---for food, for safety, and for sexual reproduction---at a time when a rapidly transforming environment was making increasing demands on the human power of adaptation. (Clemens 205)
The Darwinian threat posed by Dracula is the extermination, or at least subjugation, of the human species. This fear is articulated in the novel by Jonathan Harker:
Then I stopped and looked at the Count. There was a mocking smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. (Stoker 57)
This passage echoes the “race of devils” in Frankenstein and further shifts the locus of horror from personal or even societal threats to threats against the species. The novel foregrounds recent scientific advances such as the portable typewriter, trains, the phonograph, and advanced medical techniques; these are the tools with which the protagonists ultimately defeat Dracula. Technology
triumphs over extinction for now, but Dracula andother late 19th century horror texts bring horror squarely into a modern, everyday environment; threats are no longer confined to ruined castles or desolate forests as in Gothic novels. Jonathan Harker realizes this after he has escaped the Count's castle and returned to London; it is almost as if he realizes he is no longer in a Gothic novel, but some other kind of story. Horror follows him home.