Frankenstein, published in 1818, was an instant success, and has long been regarded as a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in the unfettered advance of science. With the advent of AI, that issue is today more important than ever, so much so that a newly annotated edition of Frankenstein was recently published especially for ‘scientists, engineers, and creators’. Winterson’s Frankissstein is also concerned with progress for its own sake, without heed to consequences. ‘What is the point of progress if it benefits the few while the many suffer?’, one character asks.

Frankissstein consists of two stories told in tandem. One is based on the true story of Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein at Lake Geneva. The other, fictional, is set in the present, in England and the United States. It features Ry Shelley (most of Winterson’s names are a riff on Frankenstein), a transgender doctor studying the impact of robots on human health, Victor Stein, a handsome, charming AI professor on a mission to revive the brains of dead people, and Ron Lord, a sleazy creator of lifelike sexbots.

In the Mary Shelley story, Winterson reimagines lively philosophical discussions between Mary and her companions on subjects such as, ‘If a human being ever succeeded in reanimating a body … would the spirit return?’ and ‘if automata had intelligence … would that be sufficient to call it alive?’ As they discuss the Luddites (textile workers) in England who are smashing the looms that are taking their jobs, Mary warns that, ‘The march of the machines is now and forever …What we invent we cannot uninvent.’

Jeanette Winterson (photograph by Sam Churchill/Penguin)

The modern story echoes these concerns. It opens with Ry at a Robotics expo to interview Ron about his sexbots. Ron explains that you can rent or buy, and that there are five models (all women), including the top-of-the-line Deluxe, which has a vocabulary of two hundred words (‘some men want more than sex’). She will listen to her man talk endlessly about football without interrupting, and then say something like, ‘Ryan, you’re so clever.’ The ideal woman. Like the monster in Frankenstein, the sexbots are nameless. The potential implications for romantic relationships between men and women are crystal clear.

Ry’s next appearance is at a lecture by Victor on the future world of AI. He explains that ‘intelligence will no longer be dependent on a body’ and that humans will co-exist with ‘non-biological life forms’ created by them. The narrative then shifts back to Ry and Victor’s first meeting, at Alcor in Arizona (a real place), the world leader in cryonic technology. Victor explains that he is interested in ‘neuro-preservation’ – the preservation |of brains – and that his dream is to end death by bringing the brain back to consciousness, independent of the (dead) body. Victor and Ry start a relationship, and soon Ry is providing Victor with body parts for his experiments. Before long Victor has shown Ry his secret underground laboratory, where robots experiment on brains to try to work out how to revive them.

Frankissstein works on so many levels. Winterson’s portrayal of the love story between Ry and Victor, neither of whom has experienced love before, is deeply moving. Despite Ry’s misgivings about Victor, whom Ry sees as a ‘high-functioning madman’, Ry finds solace in him – Victor’s bed is ‘Two square metres of safety … where I don’t need to explain …’ Through Ry, Winterson explores sensitively what it means to be transgender – the duality, as well as the sense of liberation in being able to create a body for yourself that reflects who you are.

Like Frankenstein, Frankissstein is also a warning about the perils of scientific progress in the absence of careful consideration of the consequences. Do we really want female sex dolls that never say no and don’t answer back? Or brains to be revived and ‘uploaded’ into AI robots or other forms? At one point, Ry asks Victor, ‘Do you really want augmented humans, superhumans, uploaded humans?’ Winterson’s answer is clear. ‘We’re not ready for the future you want.’