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#MaryShelley

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Today in Labor History March 29, 1797: William Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin was an English journalist, philosopher and novelist. And one of the first modern proponents of anarchism. His most famous books are “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” and “Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams,” a mystery novel that attacks aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, and is regarded by many as one of the founding feminist philosophers. Her most famous book was “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #feminism #marywollstonecraft #williamgodwin #philosophy #novel #fiction #frankenstein #maryshelley #books #author #writer #journalism @bookstadon

Continued thread

i find all of this extraordinary:

#MaryShelley created "#Frankenstein"

the seminal work (arguably the first work of #scienceFiction)-

humanity creating artificial life

in a ghost story writing contest suggested by #LordByron

the father of #AdaLovelace

who predicted #AI (the first person to seriously address the topic)-

humanity creating an artificial mind

something to think about this #womensHistoryMonth:

the artistic and technological mothers of our age

bbc.com/news/magazine-24565995

6/6

Image of a human head with cogs
BBC NewsA Point of View: Will machines ever be able to think?The pursuit of "machine intelligence" has long interested computer scientists, but will machines ever think for themselves, ask Lisa Jardine.
Continued thread

an interesting connection:

it was #LordByron who proposed the ghost story writing contest that led to #MaryShelley writing "#Frankenstein", and he was the father of another #womensHistoryMonth notable: #AdaLovelace

her story is well known, but less well known is that she predicted #AI

she rejected it

her rejection was not without teeth, because the first non-#scienceFiction champion of AI, #AlanTuring, spent an inordinate amount of time refuting her critique

nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/

3/x

NIST researcher Justyna Zwolak reads a book about Ada Lovelace to her young daughter
NIST · Ada Lovelace: The World’s First Computer Programmer Who Predicted Artificial IntelligenceDuring Women’s History Month, I am remembering Ada Lovelace’s contributions and thinking about the impact she had on me as a scientist and mathematician

#womensHistoryMonth

What do many consider the 1st #scienceFiction?

One of the first works of #horror (certainly #bodyHorror)?

#MaryShelley's "#Frankenstein"

Written as a *teenager*

A teenager who had recently lost a baby

I think that's key

Horror not from taking life

But creating life

She went to Switzerland with her lover Percy Shelley who was fleeing creditors in Britain

The summer was cold and rainy so #LordByron (yes him) proposed a #ghostStory #writingContest

I think she won

1/x

Today in Labor History March 25, 1811: Oxford University expelled Percy Bysshe Shelley for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley was an English Romantic poet, radical in both his art and his politics. His poem "The Mask of Anarchy," which he wrote in 1819 after the Peterloo Massacre, is one of the first modern descriptions of nonviolent resistance. His admirers included Karl Marx, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw. He was married to Mary Shelley, author of “Frankenstein.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchy #anarchism #atheism #marx #poetry #peterloo #massecre #PercyBisheShelley #gandhi #MaryShelley #frankenstein #writer #author #books #fiction #poet @bookstadon

To my delight, my month-long "Meet #TheLastMan" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) #online via #SignumUniversity has been confirmed. It will run in June 2025.

This #MaryShelley novel is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I can't wait to discuss it with students!

Teaser: youtube.com/watch?v=k2EcVRnhii

More info: blackberry.signumuniversity.or

I'm delighted to say that it's back! My month-long "Meet #TheLastMan" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) #online via #SignumUniversity is currently a candidate for June 2025. Voting runs through May 1. Early voters will help decide the scheduling of the live discussion sessions.

This #MaryShelley novel is one of the most relevant books we can read right now.

More info: blackberry.signumuniversity.or

Teaser: youtu.be/k2EcVRnhii0?si=8YY6U3

I'm delighted to say that it's back! My month-long "Meet #TheLastMan" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) #online via #SignumUniversity is currently a candidate for June 2025. Voting runs through May 1. Early voters will help decide the scheduling of the live discussion sessions.

This #MaryShelley novel is one of the most relevant books we can read right now.

More info: blackberry.signumuniversity.or

Teaser: youtu.be/k2EcVRnhii0?si=8YY6U3

Continued thread

This quote felt particularly poignant:

"It is a strange fact, but incontestible, that the philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good, who patient, reasonable and gentle, yet disdains to use other argument than truth, has less influence over men's minds, than he who, grasping and selfish, refuses not to adopt any means, nor awaken any passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the advancement of his cause. — The Last Man, Chapter 25"

Finished "The Last Man" by Mary Shelley. A beautiful, if somewhat dense and long-winded, story about the slow death of humanity due to a plague. Published in 1826 but set in the 2090s, Shelley probably couldn't have possibly imagined what the 21st century would actually look like, but it's clear that not much has changed in terms of human behavior despite our technological advancement.

2024 Wrap-Up: Podcasts

Thanks to all of the #podcasts that invited me on this year!

My "Looking Back on Genre History" #ScienceFiction segment ran each month on #StarShipSofa.

I talked to #Potterversity about my book chapter "Dark Arts & Secret Histories: Investigating #DarkAcademia"; to #TrashCompactor & #NewBooksNetwork about my book #StarWars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away; & to #NewBooksNetwork about my book #StarTrek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier.

I also talked #Tocqueville with the #VitalRemnants podcast & #MaryShelley twice with #TheMcConnellCenter podcast.

Links to all of these: amyhsturgis.com/?page_id=9

2024 Wrap-Up: Talks

Some of my talks from this year are available online.

* Why You Should Read #TheLastMan by #MaryShelley
Link: youtu.be/_k9pH0dNPVg

* Why You Should Read #Frankenstein by #MaryShelley
Link: youtu.be/19gOThR5dZw

* A Fortnight in the Wilderness with #Tocqueville
Link: youtu.be/OaT-17hgAFU

* “Missing Students & Their Fictional Afterlives: #TrueCrime, #CrimeFiction, & #DarkAcademia" (given at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining #Crime in #PopularCulture” conference)
Link: dropbox.com/scl/fi/q221yilebjo

#SFF #ScienceFiction #History #Literature #19thCentury #IntellectualHistory #Books

A wonderful book list here, starting with a favorite of mine, #TheLastMan by #MaryShelley. I’ve had the privilege of teaching six of these novels in class. Recommended!

From #plague to planetary crisis: #ClimateFiction before #CliFi | The BMJ
#SFF #ScienceFiction #Climate

bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2583

The BMJ · From plague to planetary crisis: climate fiction before cli-fiLiterature has long sounded ecological alarms and imagined our planetary futures, finds Lakshmi Krishnan Our oldest stories begin in the soil or by the sea, myth being the original ecological narrative. The Mandé and Sumerians tell of people growing from seeds or moulded from earth; Rigveda, the ancient Hindu sacred text, and the Kojiki, the earliest written Japanese chronicle, speak of births from primordial oceans; and Abrahamic traditions place us in Eden’s lushness. With industrialisation came a new imperative: writers began exploring not just our connection to nature but also our power to destroy it. Climate fiction is a recent literary genre confronting environmental and societal breakdown. But literature has grappled with the interplay of people and environment long before “cli-fi” exploded in the 2010s. These works offer more than historical perspective. They reveal how story and imagination might help us grasp what climate data alone cannot—the full scope of our crisis—while helping us to envision paths beyond catastrophe. Lionel Verney is the sole survivor of a global plague in a 21st century Europe torn asunder by political upheaval, societal collapse, and environmental catastrophe. Shelley is better known for Frankenstein (1818); Last Man pushes those Gothic scientific horrors further, to humanity’s extinction. Written after Mount Tambora erupted in today’s Indonesia, causing a volcanic winter that lasted over two years, and reflecting Shelley’s personal tragedy, this prophecy about human spirit in the face of disaster influenced a flock of apocalyptic subgenres: the trope of a lonely human roaming the planet after a “die-off” endures. Read it for the clarity of Shelley’s vision and her evocative prose: memorably, in Verney’s encounter with a sheepdog still guarding its dead shepherd’s flock—crystallising nature’s persistence against our impermanence and suggesting the …