An Alternate History of Horror I: A Dark and Stormy Night

[FriendlyGhost]

Extract from blog post, 31st October 2124:

'...if Thomas Anderson and his assistant (a Mr I. Gor according to some sources) hadn't accidentally set their lab on fire that evening, leading to them having to leave it, perhaps he would not have been persuaded by the other members of SeaLionPress (see this article from May last year) to publicise Travellers in an Antique Land on the then-popular socmed platform Twitter. Alex Graham might not then have seen this during her meal break, so might not have bought and read it. Without this, would she have been inspired to write her famous book the following year? If not, we would have been denied one of last century's most influential cybergothic novels.'​

Comment from user ItWasntMeYouCantProveIt:

'...you might not know that it was an article on the SeaLionPress socmed forum which led to Anderson being persuaded - and that article was about the combination of circumstances which led to Frankenstein - chains of consequences, again!...'​

 

[Talwar]

That was a good read. Look forward to more.

 

[Ncw8]

Asimov wrote about the creation of the novel Frankenstein in the introduction to his collection The Rest of the Robots. There he described it as “a writer’s nightmare”. Because, although Percy Shelley was recognized as a Great Man of Literature, it is his wife’s work that has had greater popular impact. That possibly says more about Asimov than it does about Shelley, since as Ryan noted Shelley encouraged his wife in her writing.

Asimov traced the influence of Frankenstein down to Capek’s play, R.U.R. This introduced the word “Robot” to the English language, although the robots in the play were made of synthetic organic material, so were closer to Frankenstein’s monster than Robby the Robot. These robots staged a revolution against humanity, continuing the theme of artificial intelligence destroying its creator.

Asimov described his creation of the Laws of Robotics as a reaction against that. That engineers try to put safeguards around dangerous machinery, so would do the same for robots. But still modern SF hasn’t entirely given up on the idea that AI and robots are dangerous. Hence the Terminator franchise, and HAL in 2001. Even the Star Trek series featured episodes where Data or the EMH went haywire and started acting against the interests of the crew.

 

[Alex Richards]

Asimov wrote about the creation of the novel Frankenstein in the introduction to his collection The Rest of the Robots. There he described it as “a writer’s nightmare”. Because, although Percy Shelley was recognized as a Great Man of Literature, it is his wife’s work that has had greater popular impact. That possibly says more about Asimov than it does about Shelley, since as Ryan noted Shelley encouraged his wife in her writing.

Aye, and I'd consider Percy to be much more of a poet than a novelist in any case.

I mean Ozymandias is one of the Standards of British Literature in its own right, but the vast majority of the country have probably never heard of Prometheus Unbound.

 

[RyanF]

That was a good read. Look forward to more.

Thankee-sai.

Asimov wrote about the creation of the novel Frankenstein in the introduction to his collection The Rest of the Robots. There he described it as “a writer’s nightmare”. Because, although Percy Shelley was recognized as a Great Man of Literature, it is his wife’s work that has had greater popular impact. That possibly says more about Asimov than it does about Shelley, since as Ryan noted Shelley encouraged his wife in her writing.

Asimov traced the influence of Frankenstein down to Capek’s play, R.U.R. This introduced the word “Robot” to the English language, although the robots in the play were made of synthetic organic material, so were closer to Frankenstein’s monster than Robby the Robot. These robots staged a revolution against humanity, continuing the theme of artificial intelligence destroying its creator.

Asimov described his creation of the Laws of Robotics as a reaction against that. That engineers try to put safeguards around dangerous machinery, so would do the same for robots. But still modern SF hasn’t entirely given up on the idea that AI and robots are dangerous. Hence the Terminator franchise, and HAL in 2001. Even the Star Trek series featured episodes where Data or the EMH went haywire and started acting against the interests of the crew.

You can draw separate lines of influence of Frankenstein down both the horror and science fiction genres, often intertwining and overlapping like a Hapsburg family tree. It's difficult to talk about one without at least mentioning the other. There's an argument to be made that Mary Shelley is the progenitor of both the robot and zombie (the Romero kind anyway) as a character type with each of them taking different aspects from Victor's wee boy.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

I for one am shocked that Isaac Asimov was a misogynistic prick.

 

[Geordie]

Missed this at the time, but the author Emma Carroll (writer of historical fiction, aimed at roughly 9-14 year old, but plenty in it for older ones) has written a good book called Strange Star, which features spooky gonna on at the Villa on the very night of the competition, which seems rather meta, but it works.

 

[RyanF]

Missed this at the time, but the author Emma Carroll (writer of historical fiction, aimed at roughly 9-14 year old, but plenty in it for older ones) has written a good book called Strange Star, which features spooky gonna on at the Villa on the very night of the competition, which seems rather meta, but it works.

A subset of historical, allohistorical, and time travel fiction I like to call "Chuck? It's your cousin: Marvin Berry!"