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3.1.2. The artificial human 
The novel only vaguely outlines how Frankenstein breathed life into his 
creature consisting of dead body parts the scientist stole from medical 
laboratories and channel houses. In the introduction of the 1831 edition, 
Shelley exposes details about the creation of the story: in a dream, Shelley 
“saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on working of 
some powerful engine, shows signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital 
motion” (Shelley 18-19). Shelley’s quintessence, according to Feige, is 
reasonable: science and technology, inventions and progress open up 
undreamed possibilities for the future. Thus, he considers Frankenstein as the 
real trigger of science fiction. This positive attitude towards progress since 
then has become one of the most significant aspects of science fiction.
However, not every science fiction authors shares this optimism. Critics 
of progress and its technology became as well an important topos of science 
fiction, e.g. in H. G. Wells’s famous novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), 

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which criticizes the civilization and its supposed progress as a wolf in sheep’s 
clothing (Feige 19).
Frankenstein’s creature, animated by a galvanic experiment whose 
details are only sketched by Shelley, is biological (Bould 33). 
It was a dreary night in November that I beheld the accomplishment of my 
toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the 
instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the 
lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain 
pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, 
when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye 
of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its 
limbs (Frankenstein 55). 
However, the 1818 version of Shelley’s novel, still contained two passages 
that were later cut out from the 1831 version. Those excerpts described how 
Victor was taught the properties of galvanism by his father (Frankenstein 
1818, I i 22-23; Clayton 87). However, it is clear that Frankenstein “was not 
unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity” (Frankenstein, ii, 39). 
Frankenstein’s monster can be regarded as the precursor of all the 
subsequent aliens, robots and androids (robots with a human appearance), 
which roam through modern science fiction (De Camp 13, Suerbaum 45).