Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists!

by Steve Berman (Editor), Connie Wilkins (Introduction)

Overview

In the field of mad science, women have for too long been ignored, their triumphs misattributed to mere men. Society has seen the laboratory as the province of men. Jacob's Ladder electric arcs, death rays, even test tubes have phallic connotations, subliminally reinforcing the patriarchy. The mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, advocated that women appear more masculine to earn respect. If Marie Curie had been allowed to develop her Atomic Gendarmerie for the Institut du radium, surely she would have been awarded her third Nobel Prize, for Peace. Thankfully, the women working to dangerous and/or questionable ends in the pages of Daughters of Frankenstein are unafraid of the patriarchy--indeed, as lesbian mad scientists, they prefer the company and comforts of their own gender. Androids? Pfeh, the gynoid is superior. Etheric dynamos have a more pleasing design, one that is vulvar, than Tesla coils. Eighteen imaginative, if not insane, women; eighteen stories told by some of the finest writers working in queer speculative fiction: Traci Castleberry, Sean Eads, Gemma Files, Amy Griswold, and Melissa Scott.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590213605
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	08/02/2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Steve Berman has published over a hundred articles, essays, and short fiction works. He has been a finalist for the Andre Norton Award, Lambda Literary Award, Golden Crown Literary Award, and Shirley Jackson Awards. He has edited more anthologies of queer speculative fiction than any other individual, alive or dead. He resides in southern New Jersey, where he runs Lethe Press, a small press that publishes books offering queer and weird adventures for readers of every gender and sexual identity.

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2015
Berman’s (Wilde Stories 2014) collection of 18 stories—mostly originals with a few reprints—is as offbeat and expectation-defying as the title suggests. The contents range from whimsical to serious, from romantic to tragic, and from historical to futuristic. The book might as well have been subtitled Women Who Misbehave, given how many of the protagonists flout custom, challenge authority, and make a mockery of the laws of both society and nature—by robbing banks, raising the dead, or building mechanical wonders. Standouts include Gemma Files’s “Imaginary Beauties: A Lurid Melodrama,” in which college geniuses become innovative drug dealers, and Traci Castleberry’s “Poor Girl,” wherein an ambitious alchemist uses her concoctions to heal grievous wounds. Among the most unusual selections, Tracy Canfield’s “Meddling Kids” is an oddball riff on Scooby-Doo, and Sean Eads’s “Riveter” is a truly unexpected take on Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, here envisioned as ruthless but sympathetic. Lesbian protagonists can be found in every story, but their sexual orientation sometimes feels a little tacked on, as in Tim Lieder’s unsatisfying “The Moorehead Maze Experiment.” Even when specific stories fall short, this intersection of mad science and lesbian leanings is entertaining and wonderfully weird. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2015-09-16
Berman (Red Caps: New Fairy Tales for Out of the Ordinary Readers, 2014, etc.) edits an anthology of sci-fi and horror from queer perspectives. In this new anthology from Lethe Press, a cavalcade of emerging writers from the realms of horror and science fiction riffs on the concept of female (mad) scientists. The convention has a heritage: as Connie Wilkins points out in the introduction, if these women are the daughters of Frankenstein, then they are the granddaughters of Mary Shelley and great-granddaughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Jess Nevins offer further contextualizing with the essay "From Alexander Pope to Splice: A Short History of the Female Mad Scientist," laying out the history and evolution of the trope. Then come the stories themselves: in "The Moorhead Maze Experiment," an ambitious psychologist attempts to outdo the Stanford Prison Experiment in terms of innovative sadism; in "Love in the Time of Markov Processes," a lab assistant falls in love with a scientist against the backdrop of a finite universe; in "Meddling Kids," an oddly familiar mystery-solving team with a Great Dane in tow foil a professor's sinister plans. The tones of the pieces vary from campy to earnest to unsettling to literary, though in each case the author works to shift the ground beneath the reader and recast his or her assumptions. Standouts include a Lovecraft-evoking but ultimately intimate submission from Claire Humphrey ("This is Salem at its oldest and spookiest: cold fog off the ocean, daylight dimming early, gables and gambrels looming at odd angles") and a wonderfully original piece by Romie Stott about a girl trapped by her father in a Fabergé egg during the Bolshevik Revolution. A few fall flat, but they are in the minority, and the freshness of the voices outweighs the occasional lack of polish. The result is a rare combination of subverted gender norms and nostalgic pulp: sometimes provocative and generally fun. While the anthology's theme may sound niche, the reading experience argues the opposite. Short fiction fans of all stripes will find much to compel them (and to scare, excite, arouse, and amuse them, as well). A lively and engrossing collection of female-driven fiction.

Kirkus Reviews