Frankissstein: A Novel - Hardcover

Winterson, Jeanette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802129498 ISBN 13: 9780802129499

Publisher: Grove Press, 2019

Synopsis

Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love.

Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead... but waiting to return to life.

What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? In fiercely intelligent prose, Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester, England. After graduating from Oxford University she published her first novel at 25, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, to widespread acclaim and a BAFTA for her BBC TV adaption. Twenty-seven years later she revisited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Naming is power, I say to Claire.

It sure is. Adam’s task in the Garden of Eden.

Yes, indeed, to name everything after its kind.

Sexbot . . .

Pardon me, sir?

Do you think Adam would have thought of that? Dog, cat, snake, figtree, sexbot?

I am thankful he didn’t have to, Dr Shelley.

Yes, I am sure you are right. So tell me, Claire, why did they call this place Memphis?

You mean back in 1819? When it was founded?

As she speaks I see in my mind a young woman looking out of a sodden window across the lake.

I say to Claire, Yes. 1819. Frankenstein was a year old.

She frowns. I am not following you, sir.

The novel Frankenstein – it was published in 1818.

The guy with the bolt through his neck?

More or less . . .

I saw the TV show.

It’s why we are here today. (There was a look of confusion on Claire’s face as I said this, so I explained.) I don’t mean existentially Why We Are Here Today – I mean why the Tec-X-Po is here. In Memphis. It’s the kind of thing organisers like; a tie-in between a city and an idea. Memphis and Frankenstein are both two hundred years old.

Your point, Dr Shelley?

Tech. AI. Artificial Intelligence. Frankenstein was a vision of how life might be created – the first non-human intelligence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0802129498
• ISBN 13: 9780802129499
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352