The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence by Alexei Panshin, Cory Panshin Read Free Book Online

nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.” 25

    If science can do so much, how much more is there that it may yet do?
    What a powerful and subtle argument this is, as Mary presents it. It notes the demonstrable historical continuity between alchemy and modern chemistry, and calls them both “science.” It steals the fire from the old transcendence at the same time that it dismisses it and alleges the superior power of modern science. This powerful new science is not science as it may be now, but science-as-an-ideal, science as a potential higher state. This is mythic science, transcendent science, science-beyond-science. It is plausible inasmuch as it is an extension of existing science, and it is mysterious in that it is science that does not yet exist. All that we must do is acknowledge that there are miraculous powers, like the power of life, which modern science may yet discover—and the creature is ready to stir. Transcendence is ready to be born again.
    It is not Victor Frankenstein, with his vague “instruments of life,” who is the true “modern Prometheus,” bringer of fire down from heaven, darer of divine wrath. Behind Victor stands his creator. It was she who truly dared the wrath of heaven, who in fear and trembling reanimated the corpse of transcendence. She gave it a shot of super-science, these bones she had reassembled, and watched in horrified fascination as they began to move. Such is the power of super-science.
    Mary and Percy Shelley had some sense of the potential inherent in their argument. Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818. In a preface—written, as Mary later recalled, by Percy 26 —a claim is made. The claim is made in as roundabout and self-denying a fashion as the claim of Walpole in the “William Marshal” preface of The Castle of Otranto, but nonetheless, a claim is made:

    The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantments. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield. 27

    What is said here so languidly and elliptically is that Frankenstein is based on a scientific speculation which the author considers an impossibility. Nonetheless, this scientific transcendence is superior to spectres, enchantments and supernatural terrors. It is exempt from their disadvantages, the author of the preface says, without spelling out the disadvantages. He suggests merely that science-beyond-science permits novel situations and points of view.
    In fact, there are great limitations to what Mary Shelley was able to accomplish. She had established an argument for the transcendent power of science-beyond-science, but no more. Not transcendent aliens or realms.
    As long as it remains in the background, Frankenstein’s creature does appear as a being of more than human powers. It is endowed with strength and endurance greater than that of an ordinary human, climbing nearly perpendicular ascents during savage lightning storms. It follows poor Victor all over Europe, ruthlessly murdering his bride