In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love - against their better judgement - with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI.
Meanwhile, Ron Lord just divorced and living with Mum 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 cryonics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead... but waiting to return to life.
But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. 'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.'
What will happen when homosapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realise. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.
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What we could see, the rocks, the shore, the trees, the boats on the lake, had lost their usual definition and blurred into the long grey of a week's rain. LAKE GENEVA, 1816
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(@penguinrandom, 16 January 2020, ebook, 352 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @BorrowBox)
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I've read and enjoyed other books by the author so thought Frankissstein would be enjoyable. I really loved this book, a sort of AI or futuristic version of Mary Shelly's famous books with transgender characters and love and sex bots. There are even chapters set in 1816 and the years following the writing and publication of Frankenstein. I enjoyed these historical forays the most and wanted to spend more time with Mary and her friends. This is an extraordinary book. I loved it.
