The possibilities of ‘more human than human’ artificial intelligence and the dangers of playing God and are not new – they’re the subjects of one of the world’s first science-fiction novels.
‘Dark Souls’ draws on the literary theme of the ‘last man’ that emerged from the work of French author Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville and those inspired by him.
From cholera outbreaks to public health actions, war metaphors have long been used to describe diseases, to show what we fear and to explain our world to ourselves.
In the project Erasing Frankenstein, students, educators and incarcerated women collaborated to created an erasure poem of Mary Shelley’s classic text, and publicly showcase their work.
By showing us a world from which mothers are largely absent, Mary Shelley reminds us that the genius of motherhood lies less in biological reproduction than in the capacity to love.
If Mary Shelley wrote the book today, Victor would surely be a synthetic biologist. But those fiddling with living things in 2018 have hopefully learned from her cautionary tale.