Associate Professor of Classics Jesse Weiner recently presented “Classics and Science Fiction from Frankenstein to the Technoscientific Present” as the Annual Gail Burnett Lecture in Classics at San Diego State University. He discussed the influence of ancient Greek and Roman myth, literature, and philosophy on modern science fiction, suggesting that “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein serves as a mediating prism that refracts classical antiquity into futuristic works of modernity.”
Weiner proposed a theoretical connection, “in that the radical fictions of the ancient past and the technoscientific future can help think through critical issues of modernity, including AI, cloning, genetic manipulation, and ecocatastrophe.”
