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Frankenstein Unbound
Brian Aldiss
When Joe Bodenland is suddenly transported back in time to the year 1816, his first reaction is of eager curiosity rather than distress…This is Aldiss’ response to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, available for the first time in eBook.When Joe Bodenland is suddenly transported back in time to the year 1816, his first reaction is of eager curiosity rather than distress. Certainly the Switzerland in which he finds himself, with its charming country inns, breathtaking landscapes and gentle, unmechanised pace of life, is infinitely preferable to the America of 2020 where the games of politicians threaten total annihilation. But after meeting the brooding young Victor Frankenstein, Joe realises that this world is more complex than the one he left behind. Is Frankenstein real, or are both Joe and he living out fictional lives?BRIAN SAYS: Developed as a tribute to Mary Shelley’s work, following the writing of Billion Year Spree, with its proposal, since widely adopted, that Frankenstein is the first seminal work to which the label “SF” can be logically attached. Frankenstein makes a female monster to accompany the male; Bodenland, lost from our time, hunts down first Frankenstein and then the monsters, becoming monstrous himself in the process.
BRIAN ALDISS
Frankenstein Unbound
For Bob and Kathy Morsberger, who appreciate
what Mary Shelley started
Alas, lost mortal! What with guests like these
Hast thou to do? I tremble for thy sake:
Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him?
Ah, he unveils his aspect: on his brow
The thunder-scars are graven: from his eye
Glares forth the immortality of hell …
Byron, Manfred
Make the beaten and the conquered pallid, with brows raised and knit together, and let the skin above the brows be all full of lines of pain; at the sides of the nose show the furrows going in an arch from the nostrils and ending where the eye begins, and show the dilation of the nostrils which is the cause of these lines; and let the teeth be parted after the manner of such as cry in lamentation.
Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uaf61e515-a6bb-5861-ae4a-5b5721e9f622)
Dedication (#u725dd981-464f-5beb-baa8-d4acbf1d3000)
Epigraphs (#u114bdf08-5051-5276-a671-39008f418383)
Introduction (#u62f692b6-f61e-5ec8-ba01-e55df02b66c1)
Part One (#u7564facb-10db-543a-a4ef-dc0848af0dce)
Chapter 1 (#u530f108d-2a33-5e34-9bd2-63b91887bd94)
Chapter 2 (#u988a4905-03b2-521f-8da2-603f5a18ab1b)
Chapter 3 (#u5f847241-f791-5d44-b72b-6901b4c80721)
Chapter 4 (#ud5d58ce0-0ac8-5497-ac27-557b117f39c0)
Chapter 5 (#u9551a8af-68c5-5555-bf06-6ec3f816d885)
Part Two: The tape-journal of Joseph Bodenland (#u7673a279-00e9-5f35-a3b6-eaa5198da3cb)
Chapter 1 (#u0f7491b8-5ac0-5cba-ae46-d9a0f90b182d)
Chapter 2 (#u3a70e1b9-86e7-5e5c-9090-3e7e09f54469)
Chapter 3 (#u8bebedc9-d3d3-5f29-8ff9-4cb70de2dfe9)
Chapter 4 (#ub09b1795-b659-5bf6-81fc-75cbf4c6d975)
Chapter 5 (#u5331373c-d4da-5fd6-aaa0-a7d35ec0e716)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction
I had no hesitation. I was obsessed with the matter of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: its tenderness and brutal remorse, and, beyond all that, its consideration of the difficulties of life that face us. So I got up one morning and eagerly began writing this novel.
In a sense, I was just doing a duty, for I felt that anyone interested in the macabre or the mystical should not fail to read Mary Shelley’s novel. I was determined that my answering novel should embody simple human joys and sorrows: the loss of a mother, the loss of direction, the loss of a feeling for common humanity. But for all that, it should just be a grand little story …
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein whilst still in her teens – a remarkable feat. We feel in her writing resonances of Caleb Williams, arguably the finest novel written by her father, the political philosopher William Godwin.
When I wrote my history of science fiction (Billion Year Spree), I claimed Frankenstein to be the first British work to which the label science fiction can be logically attached – particularly impressive in a field long dominated by men.
My sensibilities were already telling me that for science fiction to really find acknowledgement as literature it should not simply embrace science, but should attempt to involve that wider world in which we live and move and have our being.
So I embarked on this present book. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1973.
My main character, Joe Bodenland, is taken back in time from our present to a period early in the nineteenth century, where Mary Shelley is beginning to write her book in Switzerland. There Bodenland stands, in a realm where Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron are nearby.
Though Bodenland ultimately has to meet the monster, he fares best when he meets Mary herself. She tells him she is ‘setting up shop as a connoisseur of grave stories’. Her knowledge of science, or some science, is first demonstrated when they discuss the variety of weather conditions. In fact, the weather in 1816 was bizarre – an immense volcanic eruption off an Indonesian island caused ‘the year without summer’ in Europe.
Bodenland encounters the monster near a great unaccountable city (a materialisation of the distant volcanic eruption, perhaps). Such events inevitably echo alarming proceedings in my own life. The novel ends with the same phrase concluding Mary Shelley’s novel.
Mary went on to make a career of writing. Among other things, she wrote six other novels. None of them have the strength of her first, which, we may conjecture, is imbued with the misery of her mother dying just a few days after Mary’s birth.
In Frankenstein Unbound, Bodenland and Mary take a swim together, and then make love. (This is what authors do when they are half in love with a female character. They call it sublimation. Bodenland, c’est moi!) The text declares that the Mary and Bodenland were ‘scarcely less than phantoms to each other’. There’s an admission! But the solid world beyond the lovers was no phantom, and it is there that the rest of my story lies.
Brian Aldiss
Oxford, 2013
PART ONE
1
Letter from Joseph Bodenland to his Wife, Mina:
August 20th, 2020
New Houston
My dearest Mina,
I will entrust this to good old mail services, since I learn that CompC, being much more sophisticated, has been entirely disorganized by the recent impact-raids. What has not? The headline on today’s Still is: SPACE/TIME RUPTURED, SCIENTISTS SAY. Let us only hope the crisis will lead to an immediate conclusion of the war, or who knows where we shall all be in six months’ time!
But to more cheerful things. Routine has now become re-established in the house, although we still all miss you sorely (and I most sorely of all). In the silence of the empty rooms at evening, I hear your footfall. But the grandchildren keep the least corner occupied during the day. Nurse Gregory is very good with them.
They were so interesting this morning when they had no idea I was watching. One advantage about being a deposed presidential advisor is that all the former spy-devices may now be used simply for pleasure. I have to admit I am becoming quite a voyeur in my old age; I study the children intensely. It seems to me that, in this world of madness, theirs is the only significant activity.
Neither Tony nor Poll have mentioned their parents since poor Molly and Dick were killed; perhaps their sense of loss is too deep, though there is no sign of that in their play. Who knows? What adult can understand what goes on in a child’s mind? This morning, I suppose, there was some morbidity. But the game was inspired by a slightly older girl, Doreen, who came round here to play. You don’t know Doreen. Her family are refugees, very nice people from the little I have seen of them, who have arrived in Houston since you left for Indonesia.
Doreen came round on her scouter, which she is just about old enough to drive, and the three of them went to the swimming pool area. It was a glorious morning, and they were all in their swimsuits.
Even little Poll can swim now. As you predicted, the dolphin has been a great help, and both Poll and Tony adore her. They call her Smiley.
The children had a swim with Smiley. I watched for a while and then struggled with my memoirs. But I was too anxious to concentrate; Sec. of State Dean Reede is coming to see me this afternoon and frankly I am not looking forward to the meeting. Old enemies are still old enemies, even when one is out of office – and I no longer derive pleasure from being polite!
When I looked in on the children again, they were very busy. They had moved to the sand area – what they call the Beach. You can picture it: the grey stone wall cutting the leisure area off from the ranch is now almost hidden by tall hollyhocks in full bloom. Outside the changing huts are salvia beds, while the jasmines along the colonnade are all in flower and very fragrant, as well as noisy with bees. It is a perfect spot for children in a dreadful time like the present.
The kids were burying Doreen’s scouter! They had their spades and pails out, and were working away with the sand, making a mound over the machine. They were much absorbed. No one seemed to be directing operations. They were working in unison. Only Poll was chattering as usual.
The machine was eventually entirely buried, and they walked solemnly round it to make sure the last gleaming part was covered. After only the briefest discussion, they dashed away to different parts of the area to gather things. I saw their quick brown bodies multiplied on the various screens as I called more and more cameras into action. It looked as if the whole world was tenanted by little lissom savages – an entirely charming illusion!
They came back to the grave time and time again. Sometimes they brought twigs and small branches snapped off the sheltering acacias, more often flower-heads. They called to each other as they ran.
Nurse Gregory had the morning off, so they were playing entirely alone.
You may recall that the cameras and microphones are concealed mainly in the pillars of the colonnade. I was not picking up what the children were saying very well because of the constant buzzing of bees in the jasmine – how many secrets of state were saved by those same insects?! But Doreen was talking about a Feast. What they were doing, she insisted, was a Feast. The others did not question what she said. Rather, they echoed it in excitement.
‘We’ll load on lots of flowers and then it will be a huge, huge Feast,’ I heard Poll say.
I gave up work and sat watching them. I tell you, theirs seemed the only meaningful activity in the crazy warring world. And it was inscrutable to me.
Eventually, they had the grave covered with flowers. Several branches of acacia were embedded on top of the mound, which was otherwise studded with big hollyhock flowers, crimson, mauve, maroon, yellow, orange, with an odd scarlet head of salvia here and there, and a bunch of blue cornflowers that Poll picked. Then round the grave they arranged smaller twigs.
The whole thing was done informally, of course. It looked beautiful.
Doreen got down on her knees and began to pray. She made our two solemn grandchildren do likewise.
‘God bless you, Jesus, on this bright day!’ she said. ‘Make this a good Feast, in Thy name!’
Much else she said which I could not hear. The bees were trying to pollinate the microphones, I do believe. But chiefly they were chanting, ‘Make this a good Feast, in Thy name!’ Then they did a sort of hopping dance about the pretty grave.
You must wonder about this unexpected outbreak of Christianity in our agnostic household. I must say that at first it caused me some regret that I have for so long stifled my own religious feelings in deference to the rationalism of our times – and perhaps partly in deference to you, whose innocent pagan outlook I always admired and hopelessly aspired to. As far as I know, Molly and Dick never taught their children a word of prayer. Perhaps the traditional comforts of religion were exactly what these orphans needed. What if those comforts are illusions? Even the scientists are saying that the fabric of space/time has been ruptured and reality – whatever that may be – is breaking down.
I need not have worried overmuch. The Feast ceremony was basically pagan, the Christian formulae mere frills. For the dance the children did among their plucked flowers was, I’m sure, an instinctual celebration of their own physical health. Round and round the grave they went! Then the dance broke up in rather desultory fashion, and Tony popped his penis out of his trunks and showed it to Doreen. She made some comment, smiling, and that was that. They all ran and jumped into the pool again.
When the gong sounded for lunch and we all assembled on the verandah, Poll insisted on taking me to look at the grave.
