Frankenstein (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

Brilliant, driven Victor Frankenstein has at last realised his greatest ambition. The scientist has succeeded in creating intelligent life. But when his creature first stirs, Frankenstein realises he has made a monster. And, abandoned by its maker and shunned by everyone who sees it, the Doctor's creation sets out to destroy him and all that he holds dear.



Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written, a book that chillingly captures the unforeseen terror of playing God. And the heart-stopping fear of being pursued by a powerful, relentless killer.

Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image … but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

Brilliant, driven Victor Frankenstein has at last realised his greatest ambition. The scientist has succeeded in creating intelligent life. But when his creature first stirs, Frankenstein realises he has made a monster. And, abandoned by its maker and shunned by everyone who sees it, the Doctor's creation sets out to destroy him and all that he holds dear.



Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written, a book that chillingly captures the unforeseen terror of playing God. And the heart-stopping fear of being pursued by a powerful, relentless killer.