Fathers, Not Science

The first science fiction novel begins with no science at all. Victor Frankenstein introduces himself through fathers, civic honors, and a marriage arranged like a bequest, and Charlotte Gordon reads that strange opening as a set of planted moral tags: care for the aerial creations of the poets and you are good; hunt the secrets of the universe and watch out. Then the famous education, which contains languages, alchemists, and not one lesson about responsibility to another human being. Gordon ends with a recantation of her own, and a teenager's book gets its due.