How a teenage girl’s waking dream birthed what is (probably) the first science fiction novel – and in the process gave the world its most enduring image of technology gone wrong. This time we’re coming for the myth, the curse, the cliche that is Frankenstein. John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach climb up the tower, point the lightning conductor to the heart of the storm, and attach electrical cables to the neck-bolts of that fearful thing on the slab. Yes, it may be 200-years old but … it’s alive! They walk through the original 1818 plot — stranger and bleaker than the films — weigh the long-running argument over whether it really counts as science fiction, and trace the monster’s afterlife from the 1910 Edison short and James Whale’s 1931 classic to Boris Karloff, Mel Brooks, Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstrat”, Guillermo del Toro … and beyond. In this episode:

• What really happened at the Villa Diodati in 1816?
• The radical parents and a childhood shadowed by death that made Mary Shelley
• Born in the age of revolutions: Enlightenment values battles alchemy and the occult
• How two Brits, James Whale and Boris Karloff, created a look for the creature in their famous 1931 film that resonated through a thousand sequels, rip-offs and pisstakes
• Did Mary Shelley predict the death of God?

Connect with The Learning Hack:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer
X: @johnhelmer
Threads: @jphelmer
Substack: @learninghack
Instagram: @tech.imaginarium
Website: learninghackpodcast.com

Listen and watch: https://linktr.ee/learninghack

Music by Nick Dwyer recording as Flintet. The Tech Imaginarium is a Learning Hack podcast, produced and hosted by John Helmer and written by John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach.