The New York Times Is Wrong About Science Fiction

Harrison Cook
November 21, 2024 | 4 min read

Even though it’s four years old now, the 2021 New York Times article claiming H.G. Wells invented the genre of science fiction still makes the rounds on social media, sparking outrage, push-back, and splitting literary hairs.

You know the literary type: we’re well-read and love citing sources and, well, being right. I’m speaking from experience here. And that’s why I’m confident telling you that The New York Times forgot about this little book called Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus fused elements of romanticism and the gothic to create a tale many call gothic horror. But her fascination with the technology of the day (like electricity that ran through tesla coils) pushed her imagination and her writing to create a future devoid of death. Her seminal novel examines how this complicates the mortal coil.

What if anyone could reanimate a loved one or create an amalgam of dead body parts? What soul occupies the new body? What does it say about the consciousness of the scientist who pursues such endeavors?

That is pure science fiction.

Check out the inspiration behind Frankenstein and the biographical details that paint a clearer picture of Mary Shelley, the true pioneer of science fiction!

You know the literary type: we’re well-read and love citing sources and, well, being right. I’m speaking from experience here. And that’s why I’m confident telling you that The New York Times forgot about this little book called Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley Had an Interesting Childhood

Mary Shelley was raised by her father, a political journalist and philosopher, and was often encouraged to write despite not receiving a formal education. Her father often kept the company of leading intellectuals of the day, which inspired Shelley’s storytelling.

While there is a lot of Mary Shelley lore, which is hard to separate from the truth at times, Shelley’s life was as dark, gothic, and passion-filled as the horror she wrote.

Let’s address the elephant in the room — yes, it’s more than likely that Mary Shelley lost her V-card with her soon-to-be husband, Percy Shelley, at her mother’s grave. There’s a lot to unpack there.

Percy was a poet, so it was almost expected of him to do overtly crazy things, and Mary did lose her mom ten days after being born, so maybe she gets a pass too.

However, the parallel between Mary Shelley and her fictional Victor Frankenstein is clear, given that in the novel, Dr. Frankenstein often supplements his anatomy and chemistry lessons by digging up graves and comparing their parts.

In every fiction, there is something real, and in everything real, there is some fiction.

The Science That Made Frankenstein’s Monster

Eighteenth and ninteenth-century scientific theory is wild but also held some surprising truths. Galvanism, a leading scientific branch at the time, suggested the body’s electrical framework could be flipped back “on” when a current was reintroduced into the body’s chemicals — which led to the belief you could reanimate the body under the right conditions and with the right materials.

Mary and Percy Shelley would see a scientific demonstration of this principle in a traveling symposium — an event wonderfully stylized in the bioflick Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning. Here, the scientists would supercharge a metal rod and then press it on the skin of a dead frog, which would “magically” kick back to life.

A modern reader, of course, knows this is simply an electric current causing the corpse’s muscles to contract. But place yourself in the audience of this symposium and imagine seeing a dead frog kick — it would be the stuff of mad science, the stuff of novels!

There was a greater dialogue between the arts and sciences back then, too, which often painted the heralds of discovery as equal parts fervent passion and fearful power. This clearly serves as a blueprint for the doctor himself.

In the novel, Dr. Frankenstein references Benjamin Franklin’s famous key-and-kite experiment to test the path of lightning currents. There’s even some speculation on the two figures sharing the same five letters in their last name.

There was a greater dialogue between the arts and sciences back then, too, which often painted the heralds of discovery as equal parts fervent passion and fearful power.

The Writing Sleepover

Another legendary setting: the sleepover-turned-writing-contest that produced The Modern Prometheus. Lord Byron; John Polidori, Byron's personal physician; and Percy and Mary Shelley tasked one another with writing a ghost story while escaping the summer rain in Switzerland.

Mary would initially write a short story version of Frankenstein, which would later be developed and edited by Percy Shelley. Lord Byron wrote the beginnings of a vampire short story and Polidori expanded that into a novel called The Vampyre. It’s thought that Percy started a short story about his childhood but abandoned it to work on a collection of poems.

While several literary works were produced on that trip, only one truly stands the test of time through countless reimaginations and adaptations. Think of the depressed teens making the “perfect” boyfriend in Lisa Frankenstein, and experiments in learning what it means to be human-like, as in Poor Things.

The relationship between the creator and what’s created, an archetype used to create the science fiction genre by Mary Shelley, never fails to disappoint.

In Conclusion

We should probably give an overworked NYT writer and editor a break. Maybe.

Here’s the rub: while Wells certainly helped shape the genre of science fiction, the article breezed past one key pioneer of sci-fi, Mary Shelley. By the time H.G. Wells was born in 1866, Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus had been published for 48 years.

It’s high time we stop erasing the contributions of women writers from our collective literary history. Period.

Think of it this way: Frankenstein’s monster ran (or lumbered) so Wells's Martians could plan their earthly invasion.

Think of it this way: Frankenstein’s monster ran (or lumbered) so Wells's Martians could plan their earthly invasion.

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Resources

Audrey Shafer, MD. “Why Issues Raised in Frankenstein Still Matter 200 Years Later.” Stanford Medicine Magazine, 1 Feb. 2024, stanmed.stanford.edu/why-issues-raised-in-frankenstein-still-matter-200-years-later.
Reef, Catherine. Mary Shelley: The Strange, True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator. Clarion Books, 2018.
“The Story of Mary Shelley.” The Queen’s Reading Room, 10 Nov. 2023, thequeensreadingroom.co.uk/the-story-of-mary-shelley.

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Hitting “publish” on an essay or a blog always stirs up insecurity — the overthinking, the over-editing. The fear that someone will call me out for not being a real writer.

I initially hesitated to make writing part of my freelance work. My background is in photography and design. Writing was something I gravitated toward, but I had no degree to validate it. No official stamp of approval.

Like many writers, I started with zero confidence in my voice — agonizing over edits, drowning in research, second-guessing every word.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

If my words weren’t my own, they couldn’t be wrong. Ghostwriting meant safety — no risk, no vulnerability, just words without ownership.

I still remember the feeling of scrolling to the bottom of an article I had written and seeing someone else’s name, their face beside words that had once been mine.

The truth is, I always wanted to write. As a kid, I imagined it. Yet, I found myself handing over my work, letting someone else own it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. It was work. Getting paid to write should be enough.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

The Disappearing Act

This was true when I was writing under my own name, too. The more I worried about getting it right, the less I sounded like me.

I worried. I worried about how long an essay was (“people will be bored”), finding endless examples as proof of my research (“no way my own opinion is valid on its own”), the title I gave a piece (“it has to be a hook”), or editing out personal touches (“better to be safe than be seen”).

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting. Advice meant to help only locked me in. It created a sentence rewritten to sound smarter, an opinion softened to sound safer, a paragraph reshaped to sound acceptable.

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

It took deliberate effort to break this habit. I’m not perfect, but here’s what I know after a year of intentionally letting my writing sound like me:

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

The Resurrection

The drive for acceptance is a slippery slope — one we don’t always realize we’re sliding down. It’s present in the small choices that pull us away from artistic integrity: checking how others did it first, tweaking our work to fit a mold, hesitating before saying what we actually mean.

And let’s be honest — this isn’t just about writing. It bleeds into everything.

It’s there when we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, when we hold back our true way of being, when we choose work that feels “respectable,” whatever that means. It’s in every “yes” we say when we really want to say “no.”

If your self-expression is rooted in a need for acceptance, are you creating for yourself — or for others? Does your work help you explore your thoughts, your life? Does it add depth, energy, and meaning?

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

I get it. We’re social creatures. Isolation isn’t the answer. Ignoring societal norms won’t make us better writers. Often, the most meaningful work is born from responding to or resisting those norms.

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Am I doing this to be part of a community, to build connections, to learn and grow?

Or am I doing this to meet someone else’s expectations, dulling my voice just to fit in?

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I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

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