In 1818, at the age of twenty, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he creates grew into one of the most influential novels in Western literature.

Frankenstein is often regarded as an early and defining work of science fiction. That classification isn’t undisputed: the novel also draws on Gothic literature, Romanticism, alchemy, and horror. But the combination of scientific curiosity, a technical intervention in nature, and its societal consequences is why many literary scholars consider the book a foundation of modern science fiction.

The story poses a question that remains relevant today: what happens when people create something whose consequences they cannot, will not, or dare not bear?

Why Frankenstein Is Science Fiction

Fantastic travel stories, Gothic novels, and tales of supernatural phenomena already existed in Shelley’s time. Frankenstein stands out because the marvelous isn’t primarily explained through magic, divine intervention, or folklore. Victor Frankenstein tries to unravel the secrets of life and death using what he himself calls “natural philosophy”: the precursor to modern natural science.

That makes the novel more than a horror story. Shelley uses the science of her time as the starting point for a thought experiment:

• What if people succeed in creating or restoring life?
• What if technical knowledge grows faster than our ability to grasp its consequences?
• And what responsibility does a creator have toward their creation?

These are classic science fiction questions. Science fiction doesn’t use predictions to fix the future in place, but plausible or imaginable developments to critically examine the present.

The Science Behind Frankenstein

Shelley wrote Frankenstein during a period when natural science was changing rapidly. Scientists and philosophers debated electricity, chemistry, anatomy, vitality, and what distinguishes living matter from dead matter.

One major source of inspiration was the debate around ‘galvanism’. The Italian physician and researcher Luigi Galvani had shown in the late eighteenth century that electrical impulses could make the muscles of dead frogs contract. Such experiments fed a broader question: could electricity have something to do with the life force? (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih).

In 1803, Giovanni Aldini, a nephew of Galvani, performed a notorious experiment in London on the body of the executed George Forster. Electrical stimulation caused parts of the body to move. For contemporaries, this could easily suggest that the boundary between life and death was less sharp than assumed. The Science Museum Group describes how this then-new knowledge about electricity and reanimation helped shape both Shelley’s imagination and the novel’s scientific context (blog.sciencemuseum.org).

It’s worth noting that in the novel itself, Shelley doesn’t technically explain how Victor Frankenstein brings his creature to life. The familiar images of lightning, electrical machines, and laboratory equipment mostly come from later stage adaptations, illustrations, and films. Shelley does explicitly connect her story to the scientific debates of her time about life, matter, and vitality (eprints.whiterose.ac).

Anatomy, Bodies, and the Boundary of the Human

Victor Frankenstein collects body parts to build his creature. That detail reflects the growing interest in anatomy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Medical schools needed bodies for teaching and research, while their legal availability was limited. This led to a trade in bodies in Britain, and sometimes to the exhumation of recently buried remains.

But the novel is about more than medical progress or the body as technical material. Shelley also raises a question about human dignity. What happens when a person or body is reduced to raw material for knowledge, innovation, or ambition?

That question remains relevant today, for example around organ donation, stem cell research, genetic data, biobanks, and AI systems that process vast amounts of human data. But the comparison shouldn’t be taken too literally: modern medical applications are bound by strict ethical, legal, and professional rules. Still, Frankenstein remains useful as a warning against viewing human bodies and lives purely through a technical lens.

From Galvanism to Modern Biotechnology

It’s tempting to connect Frankenstein directly to all of modern biotechnology. That makes for compelling examples, but it also calls for precision. The novel didn’t predict organ transplantation, genetic diagnostics, or artificial intelligence. What Shelley does make visible is the ethical questions that arise as people gain ever more ability to intervene in life, the body, and identity.

Electrical Stimulation and Recovery

Electrical stimulation is a serious field of research and treatment today. For certain types of spinal cord injury, spinal cord stimulation is being studied or applied to support function and voluntary movement. Researchers stress that results can be promising, but depend on the type of injury, training, rehabilitation, and further clinical development (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih).

That is something entirely different from bringing dead bodies back to life. Still, the comparison shows why Shelley’s contemporaries were so fascinated by electricity: electrical impulses reveal that the body, nervous system, and movement are connected in more complicated ways than they first appear.

Organs and a ‘Second Life’

Organ donation and transplantation also evoke associations with Frankenstein. Organs and tissue can be used after a donor’s death to support the life or functioning of someone else. But again, caution is needed: this is not “reviving” dead matter in Shelley’s sense. It involves carefully regulated medicine, donation, surgical expertise, and complex ethical decision-making.

The relevant question from Frankenstein, then, isn’t whether transplantation is “Frankenstein-like.” The more interesting question is: how do we ensure that medical innovation comes with responsibility, consent, justice, and care for everyone involved?

Genetics and Embryo Selection

The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 and produced a reference map of the human genome. The project doesn’t fully explain how life originates, nor does it make it possible to design people to order. But genomic knowledge has strongly influenced diagnostics, research into hereditary conditions, and personalized medicine (genome.gov).

Preimplantation genetic testing can be used in specific medical situations to screen embryos for certain hereditary conditions. Selecting for complex, non-medical traits such as intelligence, height, or appearance is scientifically unreliable, ethically contested, and not recommended as a clinical application by professional organizations. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine states in a recent guideline that polygenic embryo selection for non-medical traits should not be used; the technique is also not yet proven for routine clinical use (asrm.org).

This is where Frankenstein touches on a modern question: not just whether we can make certain technical choices, but also: who decides, on what basis, and with what consequences for future people?

The Creature Is Not a Mindless Monster

In many film adaptations, ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ is a silent, violent figure. In Shelley’s novel, this is far more nuanced. The creature learns to speak, read, and think. It longs for connection, friendship, and recognition.

That makes the novel morally more complex than many adaptations suggest. Victor Frankenstein creates a being, but then rejects it the moment he’s confronted with its appearance and the consequences of his own act. The creature seeks contact with people, but is repeatedly rejected and mistreated. Its violence doesn’t arise independently of that experience of exclusion.

In this way, Shelley reverses the usual question. It isn’t only the created being who bears responsibility for its actions; the creator and the surrounding environment carry responsibility too. Whoever creates something or someone cannot simply walk away once the consequences become uncomfortable.

This theme feels surprisingly current. It plays into discussions about autonomous AI systems, social robots, algorithms in the public sector, and digital technologies that affect people who had no part in developing them. Not because AI is literally a conscious “creature,” but because designers, organizations, and governments remain responsible for the systems they release into the world.

Responsibility for What We Make

Later in the novel, the creature asks Victor Frankenstein to create a companion. Victor begins the task but destroys his work before it’s finished. He fears that two creatures might reproduce and that a new species could threaten humanity.

Shelley puts her protagonist in a dilemma with no easy way out. The creature has a right to care and recognition, but Victor fears the consequences of a second creation. The central problem isn’t that Victor seeks knowledge. The problem is that he acts without first thinking through responsibility, relationships, consequences, and repair.

That is the lasting foresight lesson of Frankenstein. Innovation isn’t only a technical challenge. Anyone developing a new system, product, algorithm, organism, or piece of infrastructure also needs to think about questions like:

• What problem are we actually trying to solve?
• Who benefits, and who bears the risks?
• What consequences are foreseeable, even in the longer term?
• What happens when the system is used in unexpected ways?
• Who is responsible for oversight, maintenance, repair, and damage?
• Which groups have no part in the design, yet will face the consequences?

These are questions that fit well within strategic foresight. Strategic foresight doesn’t help predict every consequence, but it does help examine assumptions, surface possible side effects, and make better choices before a development becomes irreversible.

Frankenstein as Strategic Foresight

Frankenstein is nearly 210 years old, yet remains relevant because Shelley offers no technical answer to how far science should go. Instead, she shows that every major discovery also creates new relationships, responsibilities, and moral dilemmas.

So the novel isn’t simply a warning against science. Shelley doesn’t reject curiosity or knowledge. Her critique is aimed at ambition without a duty of care, innovation without reflection, and creators who evade responsibility the moment their creation claims its own place in the world.

That’s why Frankenstein remains a powerful form of strategic foresight. The book doesn’t center on one specific technological or societal prediction, but on a “what if” question that is still relevant today:

What if we make something with more consequences than we can foresee? And what are we then obligated to do?

Read more about science fiction prototyping as a strategic foresight method

Further reading:

• The full text of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is available via Project Gutenberg, among other sources: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84
• Science Museum Group on the science behind Frankenstein: https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/the-science-behind-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/
• Richard Holmes in Nature on the novel’s scientific context: https://www.nature.com/articles/535490a

Sources:

• Original article: Silke de Wilde, “Visionaries of the future: Mary Shelley”, Futuristablog.com, November 9, 2012. Archived via web.archive.org
• Discovery Channel documentary series Prophets of Science Fiction
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)