The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) Read online

  STEPHEN JONES is the winner of two World Fantasy Awards and two Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards, as well as being a nine-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A full-time columnist, television producer/director and genre film publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural and the Best New Horror, Dark Voices and Fantasy Tales series. He has written The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide and The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and compiled The Mammoth Book of Terror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles and The Hellraiser Chronicles.

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  THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

  Edited by

  STEPHEN JONES

  Robinson

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson Publishing 1994

  Collection and introductions copyright © Stephen Jones 1994

  Illustrations copyright © Martin McKenna

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is

  available from the British Library

  ISBN 1–85487–330-X

  eISBN 978-1-4721-1365-8

  Printed by HarperCollins, Glasgow

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover Art by Luis Rey

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction:

  It’s Alive!

  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

  MARY W. SHELLEY

  A New Life

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  The Creator

  R. CHETWYND-HAYES

  Better Dead

  BASIL COPPER

  Creature Comforts

  NANCY KILPATRICK

  Mannikins of Horror

  ROBERT BLOCH

  El Sueño de la Razón

  DANIEL FOX

  Pithecanthropus Rejectus

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  Tantamount to Murder

  JOHN BRUNNER

  Last Train

  GUY N. SMITH

  The Hound of Frankenstein

  PETER TREMAYNE

  Mother of Invention

  GRAHAM MASTERTON

  The Frankenstein Legacy

  ADRIAN COLE

  The Dead Line

  DENNIS ETCHISON

  Poppi’s Monster

  LISA MORTON

  Undertow

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  A Complete Woman

  ROBERTA LANNES

  Last Call for the Sons of Shock

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  Chandira

  BRIAN MOONEY

  Completist Heaven

  KIM NEWMAN

  The Temptation of Dr Stein

  PAUL J. McAULEY

  To Receive is Better

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  The Dead End

  DAVID CASE

  Frankenstein

  JO FLETCHER

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, thanks to Jo Fletcher for all her help.

  “Introduction: It’s Alive!” copyright © 1994 by Stephen Jones.

  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary W. Shelley. Originally published in 1818, revised in 1831.

  “A New Life” copyright © 1987 by Ramsey Campbell. Originally published in Winter Chills 1. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Creator” copyright © 1978 by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Originally published in The Cradle Demon. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Better Dead” copyright © 1994 by Basil Copper.

  “Creature Comforts” copyright © 1994 by Nancy Kilpatrick.

  “Mannikins of Horror” copyright © 1939 by Weird Tales, copyright © renewed 1967 by Robert Bloch. Originally published in Weird Tales, December 1939. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Ralph M. Vicinanza Ltd.

  “El Sueño de la Razón” copyright © 1994 by Daniel Fox.

  “Pithecanthropus Rejectus” copyright © 1937 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Originally published in Astounding Stories, January, 1938. Reprinted by permission of the author’s executor, Karl Edward Wagner.

  “Tantamount to Murder” copyright © 1994 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Ltd.

  “Last Train” copyright © 1994 by Guy N. Smith.

  “The Hound of Frankenstein” copyright © 1977 by Peter Tremayne. Originally published in The Hound of Frankenstein. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, A.M. Heath & Company, Ltd.

  “Mother of Invention” copyright © 1994 by Graham Masterton.

  “The Frankenstein Legacy” copyright © 1994 by Adrian Cole

  “The Dead Line” copyright © 1979 by Stuart David Schiff. Copyright © 1982 by Dennis Etchison. Originally published in Whispers Number 13–14, October 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Poppi’s Monster” copyright © 1994 by Lisa Morton.

  “Undertow” copyright © 1977 by Stuart David Schiff. Originally published in Whispers Number 10, August 1977. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Complete Woman” copyright © 1994 by Roberta Lannes.

  “Last Call for the Sons of Shock” copyright © 1991 by David J. Schow. Originally published in The Ultimate Frankenstein. Reprinted by permission of th
e author.

  “Chandira” copyright © 1994 by Brian Mooney

  “Completist Heaven” copyright © 1994 by Kim Newman.

  “The Temptation of Dr Stein” copyright © 1994 by Paul J. McAuley.

  “To Receive is Better” copyright © 1994 by Michael Marshall Smith.

  “The Dead End” copyright © 1969 by David Case. Originally published in The Cell and Other Tales of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Frankenstein” copyright © 1994 by Jo Fletcher.

  This one is of course for Kim,

  in friendship and admiration.

  Introduction

  It’s Alive!

  FRANKENSTEIN . . . His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world’s most famous Monster lives again!

  Both maker and Monster were originally conceived in the imagination of Mary W. Shelley during the summer of 1816 in Switzerland. Along with her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr John Polidori and Lord Byron, who were staying in neighbouring households on the shores of Lake Geneva, the eighteen-year-old Mary decided to try her hand at writing a ghost story. Urged by Percy to develop the result into a book-length work, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published anonymously a year and a half later.

  It was a huge success, and by 1823 at least five different adaptations were being staged in London. The story first reached the screen in 1910 when Charles Ogle portrayed the misshapen creation. At least two more versions were filmed before Universal cast the relatively unknown Boris Karloff in the role of the Monster for James Whale’s classic 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein. With his square-shaped skull, corpse-like pallor and distinctive neck bolts, it’s Karloff’s (and make-up maestro Jack Pierce’s) sympathetic interpretation of the creature which most people still remember.

  Karloff recreated his role through two sequels before tiring of the part, but Universal kept the series going for another five episodes. Lon Chaney, Jr, Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange all donned the distinctive make-up, until finally Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein in 1948 and the series was brought to a satisfactory, if somewhat overdue conclusion.

  Boris Karloff went on to play the creator in Frankenstein 1970 (1958) and appeared as the Monster one last time on television’s Route 66 in the early 1960s. However, Mary Shelley’s immortal creation continued to live on in numerous low budget variations involving Frankenstein and his apparently limitless offspring and prodigies.

  In 1957 Britain’s Hammer Films revived the characters, this time in colour, with The Curse of Frankenstein; but instead of following the exploits of the Monster, the series of six loosely-connected films concentrated instead on Peter Cushing’s pitiless Baron and his failed experiments. There have been numerous screen and television adaptations since, and Robert De Niro’s dignified creation in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) is unlikely to be the final interpretation.

  There have also been many literary succesors to Mary Shelley’s novel, from Donald F. Glut’s pulp series “The New Adventures of Frankenstein” to Brian Aldiss’ Frankenstein Unbound (filmed in 1990), in which Mary and her literary creations co-exist in the same alternate world. For many people, the name of Shelley’s Monster and its creator have become synonymous over the years (and there is an argument to be made that they are two representations of the same man).

  The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein collects together for the first time one poem and twenty-three electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark the interest of any reader – classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and original contributions by Graham Masterton, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton.

  Also included are three short novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case and, as a special bonus, the full and unabridged text of Mary Shelley’s original masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

  So, as an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and under the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it’s time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know . . .

  Stephen Jones,

  London, England

  Mary W. Shelley

  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was born in London, the only child of novelist and political philosopher William Godwin and the early female emancipator Mary Wollstonecraft, who died ten days after the birth of her daughter. While still a teenager, Mary eloped to Europe with the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814, finally marrying him in December 1816 – the same year she wrote the original version of the novel which follows.

  Although she never repeated the success of Frankenstein, her later novels included Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826, about the only survivor of a future plague which wipes out the world’s population), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). She also published Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1844, which was well received. Richard Garnett collected most of her short fiction in the posthumous collection Tales and Stories (1891), while another tale, “The Heir of Mondolfo”, did not see print until 1877.

  In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley recalls how the story first came to her: “When I placed my head on my pillow I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world . . .”

  After more than 160 years, the novel which follows still remains a classic of science fiction and horror . . .

  PREFACE

  THE EVENT ON which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

  I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece – Shakspeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream – and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.

  The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient fo
r exercising any untried resources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these as the work proceeded. I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding the enervating effects of the novels of the present day and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind.

  It is a subject also of additional interest to the author that this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than anything I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurrence.

  The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.

  MARLOW, September 1817.

  LETTER 1

  To Mrs Saville, England

  ST. PETERSBURGH, Dec. 11th, 17—.

  You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.