Creatures: The Legacy of Frankenstein Read online

  CREATURES

  THE LEGACY OF FRANKENSTEIN

  Tade THOMPSON

  Rose BIGGIN

  Paul MELOY

  Emma NEWMAN

  Kaaron WARREN

  Edited by David Thomas MOORE

  Praise for David Thomas Moore

  “These stories revel in both the conventions and the inventiveness of Shakespearean drama, reminding us how entertaining and subversive these plays were and can still be. Excellent stuff.”

  SFX Magazine on Monstrous Little Voices

  “Moore, one of the most exciting editors in the field today, has nurtured a line-up of interesting and evocative talent for an extremely entertaining ride.”

  Starburst on Not So Stories

  “A fascinating collection that talks back—not just speaks, but explicitly talks back—to Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel. Moore and his stable of writers respond not just to the fictional figure and his historical counterpart, but to the cultural conversations around him as well.”

  Future Fire on Dracula: Rise of the Beast

  “The stories are so beautiful and there is so much to them. I think that you could have amazing discussions about them.”

  Huntress of Diverse Books on Not So Stories

  “Not So Stories feels as much like a collaboration as it does a collection. These authors worked together, drew upon each other for inspiration. They have built something solid, something whole. It’s a beautiful idea which has taught me something new, several things new, and raised the bar for what is possible in a science fictional (and fantastical) anthology.”

  Imaginaries on Not So Stories

  “All in all, Monstrous Little Voices is something special, and definitely worth checking out.”

  SF Bluestocking on Monstrous Little Voices

  “As a whole, an easy one to recommend. Even if you aren’t a Shakespeare fan, you’ll enjoy the stories in this collection, but fans of the Bard will find this to be a rich feast.”

  Fantasy Literature on Monstrous Little Voices

  “A good anthology should be able to surprise the reader around a central theme, and with credit to David Thomas Moore’s editing we have five unique stories adding to a legend where many of us thought we’d seen everything.”

  Run Along the Shelves on Dracula: Rise of the Beast

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  First published in 2018 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Publishing Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Editors: David Thomas Moore,

  Michael Rowley and Kate Coe

  Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne and Maz Smith

  Marketing and PR: Remy Njambi

  Cover Art by Sam Gretton.

  All stories copyright © 2018 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Publishing Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-123-7

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction, David Thomas Moore

  Kaseem’s Way, Tade Thompson

  The New Woman, Rose Biggin

  Reculver, Paul Meloy

  Made Monstrous, Emma Newman

  Love Thee Better, Kaaron Warren

  About the Authors

  Also by Abaddon

  Introduction

  David Thomas Moore

  THE FIRST OF January, 1818—two hundred years ago—saw the release of one of the most important and influential works in the history of science fiction (described by Brian Aldiss, with a degree of justification, as the first modern science fiction book): Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus.

  Famously inspired by a challenge to produce a ghost story, Frankenstein nonetheless obeyed all the rules for what we consider science fiction today: grounded in the scientific discoveries of its time, it extends that work in hypothetical-yet-believable new directions, and asks what impacts such innovation would have on the people whose lives it touched. The story is driven by the will to change: the scientist seems at first more a Daedalus than a Prometheus, robbed of life and family by his hubris; but as the thief of fire he fits too (although I’m aware Shelley almost certainly intended the Roman Prometheus, who made man from clay). More than a mere homily on the dangers of science, the story is a battle-cry, a declaration of intent. Cheating death is humanity’s birthright, to be snatched at the first opportunity, and Frankenstein’s death the bitter retribution of a jealous God.

  It’s impossible to overstate Frankenstein’s impact on the genre. From its endless adaptations, retellings and sequels, to the centuries of debate about its themes, to successive new generations of writers adopting those themes, the spectres of Shelley’s manic, inspired medical student and his tragic, soulful creation haunt every corner of our world. Their voices echo in the blandly murderous tones of Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL-9000; they glitter in Roy Batty’s eyes in Bladerunner as he contemplates his mortality; Asimov even credited his Three (eventually Four) Laws of Robotics to a fear of technology he called the “Frankenstein complex.” We owe so many of the stories we tell today to that extraordinary young woman and the dream that drove her.

  In the book you hold now, the scientist’s discovery likewise survives the ages, brought to light by men and women searching for meaning; Prometheus returns to rob the gods again and again. From the bloodstained anatomists of Tade Thompson’s “Kaseem’s Way” to the bohemians of Rose Biggin’s “The New Woman”; from the engineers of Paul Meloy’s “Reculver” to the surgeons of Emma Newman’s “Made Monstrous” and the smiling cult leader of Kaaron Warren’s “Love Thee Better,” Shelley’s call is taken up through the years. My brilliant writers bring these times to life in furious colour: we smell the bile and rot of Tade’s London and are dazzled by the lights and beauty of Rose’s; our feet crunch the gravel on Paul’s grey Kentish coast, and our eyes smart in the cigarette smoke of Emma’s scruffy, laddish Lancashire police building. God knows Kaaron’s idle, delirious sun-drenched cruise could last a week or a thousand years. And Shelley lurks in all these times, her mission timeless, her battle-cry ringing in our ears.

  The first creature—Adam, he’ll always be to me, though he takes up and discards names like clothes—survives the ages, too, although in some stories he’s harder to find than others. Each of these stories is a tragedy, in their way, with death and sorrow attendant on every hero’s (or anti-hero’s, or flawed hero’s, or non-hero’s) endeavours, each destroyed by that jealous God; but Adam’s story is a slow tragedy, too, tracking a gradual decline through the tales, well past the point where he is able to understand it. It lends the whole a melancholy that underscores the frenzied hunt for knowledge.

  And both the hunt and the melancholy spring from the same source, of course, for every would-be Frankenstein is strug
gling, at last, with the meaninglessness of human existence, and with the isolation that brings. Every one of them is isolated: by the colour of their skin; by their sexuality; by disability and the awkwardness of puberty; by jealousy; by self-hatred. The drive to create is an externalisation of the need for human contact, for humanity itself.

  In turn, of course, the creatures are also ciphers; how could they not be? The scientist’s act of creation mirrors the author’s own, and so the story will always have a little of the writer’s soul in it. Creation, defiance, isolation and destruction are themes that can run the gamut of human experience. And so in Tade’s story they serve to criticise Britain’s colonial heritage, while in Rose’s (herself an actor, dancer and playwright) they raise questions of art and beauty. Paul’s story invokes nostalgia and innocence lost, while Emma’s rages against sexism and injustice; and Kaaron’s addresses the detachment of modern life, where we become so lost in the world that we are estranged from our own bodies.

  Creatures, scientists, writers, all bound together by the act of creation. All monsters and all victims alike, telling their stories that we’ve stitched together into something whole; something—we hope—greater than the sum of its parts.

  Here’s our creature. We hope you like it.

  David Thomas Moore

  June 2018

  KASEEM’S WAY

  TADE THOMPSON

  Waterloo, London

  1849

  GULL FINDS KASEEM Greenshank in Lower Marsh Street while taking the air in Lambeth. The street market is lively with commerce, and the understated desperation of existence, and filth. Gull remembers when it was all marshland, before it was reclaimed, and before the Church sold the land piecemeal. The ground is still muddy, and muckrakers comb through it to see what they can find.

  Gull is able to filter out the yelling and the advertising. Most would wrinkle their nose at the waste matter and dead animals, but not Gull. He does not fear that no gentleman should be found in the area, either. He comes from nothing, and nothing frightens him.

  At first he thinks the child is injured, covered in so much blood, but then he considers where he is: open air market, near the butcher’s stalls. Gull’s next thought is that the boy is feeble-minded, and playing with entrails. He is already wondering whether to make the boy a special patient when he looks closer at what he is doing. He appears to be separating small from large intestine and measuring each with a green stick. It is a cold evening, yet the boy is wearing thin linen, no hat, short sleeves. There is a tattoo on his forearm, an ideogram unknown to Gull.

  “Don’t talk to ’im, guvnor; he’s simple, he is,” says a gruff voice from behind. Gull does not deign to either respond or look.

  He pokes the child’s shoulder with his cane.

  The boy turns slowly. Gull notices for the first time that under all the blood and mud, the boy is dark-skinned. He is skinny, which makes his eyes seem larger than they are, and he stares.

  “What are you measuring?” asks Gull.

  The boy pauses, seeming to assay Gull’s intent. Then he turns back to the entrails and points. “These bags of fat—”

  “Appendices epiploicae.”

  “Say the words again.”

  Gull does, and the boy repeats them a number of times.

  “They seem to start and stop. I want to know if they start and stop at the same distance in each animal.”

  “Are they in every animal?”

  “No. Cats, dogs, rabbits, don’t have them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I checked.”

  “You checked?”

  “I checked... sir?”

  Gull speaks with the child about entrails some more, then enquires after his parents. The boy is called Kaz by everybody, but insists that his name is Kaseem. Gull cannot decide if he is Moorish or a half-breed of some kind. Gull notes a mild case of rickets, poor teeth, lines on the boy’s fingernails, the general concavity of his belly.

  “Are you hungry, Kaseem?”

  This finally distracts the child from his labours. “Yes, sir.”

  KASEEM HAS NEVER been inside a horse carriage before. He has never had a meal that wasn’t scraps and he has never bathed indoors. The clothes are still cast-offs. He does not know when he falls asleep, and the sun is in the sky when he wakes.

  There are shelves full of books, galleries full of jars and paintings. The jars contain preserved organs and the paintings are of opened bodies. Human bodies.

  “Do these frighten you?” Gull had come up behind him. The silence of the man’s gait is unnerving.

  Kaseem shakes his head.

  “Splendid. First we feed you and treat your nutritional deficiencies. Mens sana in corpore sano, after all. Then we will teach you.”

  “Teach me what, sir?”

  “The things that you want to know, child. The journey you started in the gutter.”

  KASEEM IS STANDING in a mess of blood and entrails of a horse only six hours dead. He has a kitchen knife in his right hand and has cut a cruciate cavity in the abdomen of the horse. His face is bland, without expression, and he appears intent on his task. He is fifteen.

  A cough makes him turn around.

  “Care to explain yourself, Kaseem?” says Gull.

  “The horse died, sir. It was sick. I wanted to see its heart.”

  Gull shakes his head. “Well, this is altogether too messy. I need to find you somewhere to work where you won’t frighten the help. Or me, for that matter.”

  Newgate Prison, London

  13th June 1861

  THE MEN DO not speak to Kaseem as they drop the body on the slab. They do not even look at him as they leave the room. Kaseem is already gowned and seated in a corner facing the door.

  This dead room is probably the best in the Empire, but nobody knows about it. It has a domed, transparent ceiling to catch the sunlight, and Radha’s drawings on the wall. Radha is late; by the time he comes in, Kaseem has already prepped the body. They do not greet each other. This is not unusual. Radha sets up his inks and paper, then puts on a gown to assist Kaseem. The head is engorged and black, and the eyes bulge.

  “They got the drop wrong again?” says Radha. It is not really a question. Hanging is said to be a swift death, and this is true if done right. Sometimes it is not, and the prisoner strangulates, a slow, painful death in which there is no dignity at all.

  Kaseem grunts. “Shall we move along? We’re running out of daylight.”

  They work on the dissection for two hours before they hear footfalls leading up to and stopping outside the door of the dead room. The two stop and look at each other. Nobody ever visits them. Keys jangle in the lock and Gull is standing there with a leather valise.

  “Sir,” says Kaseem. “We were not expecting you.”

  “Neither was I expecting to be here. I have to be at Guy’s Hospital within the hour, so I fear I must be briefer than I would like.”

  “Of course. What brings you here?” asks Kaseem.

  “Henry Gray is dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, smallpox. The entire medical world is in an uproar. One so young and full of promise. He was thirty-four years old.”

  “It is sad indeed, but does that not help our work here?” asks Kaseem.

  “Think on it, dear boy.”

  Henry Gray had written Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical in 1858, a book which seemed to replace all previous anatomy texts amongst medical students. Kaseem did not find Gray all that original, and Gull had set up this room in Newgate Prison for a specific project: Kaseem was to write his own anatomy text. Radha was a painter who owed Gull a debt of gratitude, and acted as illustrator for the project. Gray went from strength to strength, improving his book by elimination of errors in the American edition of 1859. Kaseem was his shadow. Gull had nurtured his natural aptitude for anatomy and taught him privately, taking him to Guy’s Hospital out of hours, making texts available to him, quizzing him. Kaseem has all the medical knowl
edge that any doctor can have, but is not enrolled in any medical school. He considers the idea a waste of his time, at any rate: he is satisfied with the search for knowledge. He has no wish to cure maladies, to apprentice to an apothecary or to cut lumps out of people. Nor does he have patience for academic empire-building or money.

  “We can still write a better book,” says Kaseem.

  “You are naïve. He has died young. He has attained immortality. Humans are sentimental. There will never be a better anatomy book than Gray’s. There may be more intelligent texts, clearer text, etc. but this will be the standard in perpetuity. Against this will others be measured, and found wanting. No, this venture is dead.”

  I can write a better book than Gray’s. But Kaseem does not say this, hearing the finality in Gull’s voice. He has made up his mind and nothing Kaseem brings up will change it. He knows this from experience.

  “Have you been outside? You look... unhealthy.”

  “I’ve been busy, sir.”

  “Child, you need to be alive to be busy.” Gull hands the valise to Kaseem.

  “What’s this?”

  “This is not an anatomy pursuit. This is a hunt for immortality.”

  Kaseem opens it; there are papers with writing in different scripts. “Another book?”

  “No.” Gull puts on his hat. “Actual immortality. Be careful with those. I acquired them at great expense.”