Mary Shelley and Post-Apocalyptic Literature and Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract Mary Shelley mined the forms and themes of plague literature, the epic, the romance, and the gothic novel to develop a new subgenre of modern science fiction: post-apocalyptic literature. Her two great science fiction works (or what I call political science fictions)—Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826)—confront the social problems that arise from humanity’s artificial, technological, and cultural interventions in the wider environment. Comparing Frankenstein and The Last Man with their literary and philosophical sources—from Sophocles and Plutarch to Goethe and Godwin—reveals Shelley’s concern with the problem of interpersonal conflict. Her science fiction novels dramatize how interpersonal conflict, if left unchecked, will spiral into the wider social and political injustices of violence, war, and other human-made disasters, such as species extinctions, plagues, and pandemics. Their themes have deeply shaped existential and post-apocalyptic fiction, from Bram Stoker, M. P. Shiel, George Orwell, Albert Camus, and Richard Matheson to Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, and Emily St. John Mandel.