The Chronicle writer explained in a great interview with Shock last year that he's attempted to coherently combine elements from Mary Shelley's original novel, and from the unwieldy subsequent Frankenstein mythologies that have built up over the years.

I found Aldiss's account of the genre's development entertaining and informative... but something bothered me, long after I'd finished reading it. So much so that I've since spent hundreds of dollars on forgotten, out-of-print books; I've written...

At the prompting of Byron, pens were set to paper to write ghost stories of their own. Here the groundwork was laid for what would become Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus. Shelley himself wrote Fragments of a Ghost Story, and Byron...

Bell summarizes this neatly when he gives the monster a line of dialogue Mary Shelley would never have dreamed of writing for him: Why, the monster demands at one point, does he get a spontaneous erection when he’s carrying out lethal acts of violence?

This plays out like a parallel to God's relationship with his creation Adam. God creates a companion whom he later rejects. This creation, humanity, then pursues a reunion with God through the ages much the way Mary Shelley's creature pursues a reunion...

In this case it was The Life and Work of Mary Wollstonecraft. “Ullo,” I thought, “slim pickings here, Dave.” I was right. My meager store of facts about Mary Wollstonecraft – married to William Godwin – mother of Mary Shelley – A Vindication of the...