Almost every significant character in the recent limited series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a Frankenstein's monster and there were multiple doctor Frankensteins, some corporate and some freelance, competing against each other.
I disagree: Frankenstein's monster is new life bereft of history or precedent, as opposed to a regular man converted into strangeness and exiled by acquired differences.
Most of those cyborg stories (Edgerunners, the newer Deus Ex's games, Ghost In The Shell) are more like... Hmm, perhaps Phantom of the Opera.
I’m not really sure how you’d put the parts of Frankenstein that really matter into cyberpunk and come out with anything but a farce, unless you ditch all the awful-but-sympathetic-creature bits somehow. Motherhood (and an intertwined nigh-irresistible drive toward and revulsion of pregnancy and giving birth), responsibility for one’s works in the world, the nature of man, abandonment, revenge, sympathetic villains… it’s great stuff, but I think if you try to do that in cyberpunk and keep anything like the Creature you’re gonna be drawn into parody or some other unfortunate hole.
Blade Runner is pretty much THE gold standard when it comes to Cyberpunk cinema, and it's themes are pretty much everything you described. Blade Runner ain't no parody.
I'm unconvinced that motherhood is a theme of Frankenstein? The subtitle ("The Modern Prometheus") suggests "a second, technological Creation" is more the intent. I'm hoping you're going to be able to convince me I'm wrong, though.
Alien/s, now that's SciFi about motherhood.
I guess if I was going to approach "cyberpunk Frankenstein" I'd end up somewhere adjacent to Michael Marshall Smith's Spares ("human clones, the ultimate health insurance").
I enjoyed the whole thread that spawned off this comment. Back in the 90s I took a literature course that did the reverse angle. With a gothic theme, we compared Frankenstein and Neuromancer. And in between, I believe we also sampled Sigmund Freud and E.A. Poe.
Animats|2 years ago
Resident Evil, the Umbrella Corporation.
Or, further back, Bubblegum Crisis, Genom Corporation.
stevenwoo|2 years ago
Terr_|2 years ago
Most of those cyborg stories (Edgerunners, the newer Deus Ex's games, Ghost In The Shell) are more like... Hmm, perhaps Phantom of the Opera.
hotnfresh|2 years ago
kikokikokiko|2 years ago
flir|2 years ago
Alien/s, now that's SciFi about motherhood.
I guess if I was going to approach "cyberpunk Frankenstein" I'd end up somewhere adjacent to Michael Marshall Smith's Spares ("human clones, the ultimate health insurance").
saltcured|2 years ago
mutant|2 years ago