Mary Shelley - Creator of a New Genre

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself.... Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested by it. - Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) wrote this as part of her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, generally recognized as the first science fiction novel. Think about it. It has a monster, reanimation, a mad scientist, Galvanism, and the idea of man as creator. [We would like to take a moment here to point out that it does NOT have hunchbacks or bolts sticking out of necks. Just sayin'.] She gives us a first-person reaction to an unfamiliar, alien environment from its ultimate outsider and focuses on her title character's inability to see the potential consequences created by the existence of a new technology. And if you don't buy that all of that makes it the first science fiction novel, she has a second horse in the race in her The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic novel set at the end of the 21st century in a world ravaged by plague. That totally sounds like science fiction to us.

Mary Shelley writes against a background of inky pines and a monster arising off a teal babydoll (fitted) t-shirt. Scroll down for detailed view of design. ThinkGeek will donate $1 of the proceeds from each shirt sold for the first month (combined with the first month's sales of the men's version) to The Girl Effect.

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