Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley was published in 1818 – two hundred years ago. I have great affection for Victor’s poor creation. All he wanted was to be loved. All he got was rejection and hatred. Of course he was cranky.
In the novel Shelley mostly skirts over Frankenstein’s process for creating his creature. Here’s a gif of my process of creating this portrait of the poor guy. 
I was in our local library picking up some holds when I spotted Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel on the new arrivals shelf. I’m fascinated by Frankenstein, both the novel and the various sequels and reinterpretations of the story and its characters. I recently did a search for Frankenstein books on Amazon to see how many versions of the tale were out there and got a result twenty pages long. That’s over 300 books. An awful lot of those listings were for different editions of the original novel. That’s not surprising. The book has been in public domain for over a century and this year is the 200th anniversary of its first publication. I compiled a wishlist of a few of the more interesting versions of the original and as many sequels/adaptations/whathaveyous as I could winnow out. I’m sure the final list is incomplete. I doubt that I will get around to reading most of the books on the list. That would require more time and money than I’m willing to invest.
Pride and Prometheus, however, was just sitting on a shelf in front of me. I didn’t bother resisting.
The book is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice and an alternate version of Frankenstein. The story takes place a few years after the events of Pride and centers around the relationships between Mary Bennet, Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s creation. The events mostly take place during Frankenstein’s time in the British Isles when he was collecting ingredients for (and putting off actually building) a mate for his creation.
I enjoyed it. It’s a sad story. All the best versions of Frankenstein are. The myth of Frankenstein is a tale of a mad scientist who creates a brute who goes on a rampage. The actual novel is about an irresponsible parent. Frankenstein creates a being and then refuses to care for it. He’s not an evil man. He’s a self centered one. His creation is smart and sensitive and rejected by all who meet him. He does bad things out of childish anger. In Pride and Prometheus, Kessel gives us alternating first person narrations by both Frankenstein and his creation. Mary Bennet (her sections told in third person) finds herself caught between the two and tries to help them find peace and common ground. Does she succeed?
As a fan of Frankenstein, I enjoyed this book. I don’t know how well it will read to Pride fans. I haven’t read that novel. I’ve seen both the 2005 film and the 1995 television miniseries. I understand that both adaptations of pretty faithful, certainly more faithful than any filmed version of Frankenstein. Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are only background characters. Mary and Kitty, the unmarried sisters, get center stage here. At 32 and 30 they are both facing the prospect of becoming “old maids” and neither likes the idea. Mary gets the book’s focus. She’s more accepting of the idea of spinsterhood but she still dreams of making a connection with an amiable gentleman. A chance encounter with Frankenstein leads her to think that he might be that gentleman.
Recommended.
Pride and Prometheus
After browsing the galleries at ArtStation.com on and off for a couple of years, I’ve decided to add my own work to the noise. My gallery can be found here. The site has a nice clean design and the focus is on works of scifi/fantasy/horror/and-similar.
This will be my third online gallery. I first made one at Epilogue.net way the hell back in 2003. Blogger didn’t yet allow image posting and it seemed like a good site to show off work. My big complaint was that submssions were moderated so not everything I wanted to post was accepted. Still, it was free and the art by other members was all pretty good. I posted there less and less as time went on. Why wait for someone to approve (or reject) my art when I could post it to my own site? My last posting there is from 2013.
My second gallery is over at DeviantArt.com. A working artist friend suggested the site as the place where all the cool working artists put their stuff. Maybe. It’s definitely a place where lots of people post a lot of stuff. I’m not crazy about the site’s design but it’s free and there’s no moderation. I’ve only posted there sporadically. I’m pretty sure that my last post there was also from 2013.
A lot of the folks who post at ArtStation, at least at their Pro level, seem to work in movies and video games. There are quite a few comic artists as well. At the moment I’m using the site as a way to currate my portfolio, to put up a variety of what I think is my best work. Having a gallery there is free but they do have a paid Pro level that might be worth joining. Eventually.
In three months, in 2018, this website will be 15 years old. I’m fudging that a bit – this website began its life as the “blog”: skook.blogspot.com in January 2003. My brother had started his own blog a few days previously and that inspired me to jump in. My posting was infrequent. I’ve never been much of a diarist. Nor am I an ardent reviewer of things. But I’d started the thing so I posted.
In 2005 Blogger included an image posting feature. About midway through 2006 I realized that I had stacks of sketches that I could scan and post. That, plus original work done for commission (or my own amusement) kept the blog active for years. 
In 2010 I leased the DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com urls. I can’t say I bought them. You can’t buy a web address. If you don’t pay to renew that address every year then you lose ownership of it. I suppose that’s fair. It keeps people from grabbing up addresses and then just sitting on them. Currently people grab up addresses and pay a small yearly fee to sit on them. 
On January 1, 2012 I launched this website. Skookworks.com, DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com all point to the same place. All the posts from Skook.blogspot.com are archived here. (The images associated with those posts are still located with blogger. I’ll have to fix that eventually.)
I’ve had times, over the years, when I wasn’t able to post much. The worst period was during my first couple of years at the Post Office. Nizzibet was ill and I had little time for anything other than delivering mail and looking after our basic survival. Between November 2014 and October 2015 I posted pretty much nothing.
In January 2016 I started regularly updating again. I’ve kept that up until now. Any breaks and changes have been planned. It’s been comfortable and I’ve been happy to be able to keep to a schedule. 
So, of course, it’s time to make some changes. I’m suspending regular updates for a while. I’m going to be redesigning this site. New banners. Lots of archiving and restructuring. I’ll be adding an online shop. We live in a capitalist society and I would be failing in my duties if I didn’t give folks the opportunity to purchase a thing or two. Some of this will happen quickly. Other plans (like the shop – I don’t currently have any products to sell) will take longer. 
I’m also going to devoting time to unfinished projects. If you’ve read my blog since the beginning you know that I’ve got a lot of them. Some of them are going to remain forever incomplete. The David who started them is not the David I am now. The current David can’t do anything with that earlier David’s work. Others have been nagging at me for years and I’m giving them the focus they need.
And I’m looking for illustration work again. I’ve turned down quite a few jobs in the last few years because I knew I couldn’t promise to meet a deadline. I may not be able to turn around an illustration overnight but I can now predict when I will be able to get a job done and so I feel comfortable offering my services once more.
I will use this blog to post updates. I will still occasionally use it to post art and illustrations. And, if all goes well, I will post again on a regular schedule.
Thank you for your time and attention. Cheers y’all!
If we program killer robots and they end up killing us all, what will they do with themselves once their programming is completed?
Making thinking machines is not a bad idea. Making machines whose primary purpose is to think about how to kill humans is a terrible, terrible idea.
By the time the robots take over the world all the large carnivores are likely to be extinct. So where did this chap get its furs?
I emailed the finished (inked and colored) version of this illustration to a friend. Just the illustration. No commentary. His response was perfect –
“I don’t think you MEAN for this robot to have skinned a teddy bear, but absent more context, that’s what I’m going with. Because I like it 🙂 “
How could we keep robots from wanting to destroy us?
All we need to do is figure how to program them to love us. And to love us no matter what. To find us funny and amusing. To be willing to be patient with our inconsistencies, our ignorance, our self destructive behavior and our shortsightedness.
Tall order.
The female robot will not be female. It will still be a machine. It might be program to act like a woman but it will not be a woman. It will not be acting like a woman. It will be acting like its programmer’s fantasy of how a woman should act. It will be acting like its programmer’s culture’s fantasy of how a woman should act.
I was going to try to write a short essay about robots and sex but this essay by Susanna Moore at The Guardian covers most of what I was likely to say.
