Frankenstein Unbound

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)