A Century of Stealing Fire

By: Editors

From right to left, actors Richard O'Brien, Tim Curry and Patricia Quinn as Riff Raff, Dr Frank-N-Furter and Magenta respectively, on a lobby card from the 1975 musical comedy 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show', produced by 20th Century Fox. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art / Getty Images)

The first mad scientist was Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. Her 1818 novel’s subtitle dubs Frankenstein “the modern Prometheus”: a man who usurps the power of the gods using modern technology. Shelley invented her mad scientist figure amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and Frankenstein’s successors have continued to channel our anxieties about whether we […]

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The first mad scientist was Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. Her 1818 novel’s subtitle dubs Frankenstein “the modern Prometheus”: a man who usurps the power of the gods using modern technology. Shelley invented her mad scientist figure amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and Frankenstein’s successors have continued to channel our anxieties about whether we […]

Medium

The first mad scientist was Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. Her 1818 novel’s subtitle dubs Frankenstein “the modern Prometheus”: a man who usurps the power of the gods using modern technology. Shelley invented her mad scientist figure amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and Frankenstein’s successors have continued to channel our anxieties about whether we […]

Large

The first mad scientist was Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. Her 1818 novel’s subtitle dubs Frankenstein “the modern Prometheus”: a man who usurps the power of the gods using modern technology. Shelley invented her mad scientist figure amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and Frankenstein’s successors have continued to channel our anxieties about whether we […]