Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction

Jeff VanderMeer’s world in Borne is vast and complex, yet its theme is almost exceedingly simple: don’t be an idiot of a parent. This seems to be a deep-rooted theme in science fiction; and, if you really think, shouldn’t be a surprise. The very first science-fiction novel was about the world’s worst parent: Victor Frankenstein. That being said, VanderMeer’s ways of telling his version of this theme is much different than Mary Shelley’s. First, we’re in a post-apocalyptic setting where parenting is practically impossible. In a flying-bear-eat-human world, there is no time for child rearing. Rachel, our main character, frequently flashes back to her own parents and how life was before, during, and after the apocalypse. She laments she never got to hear their true thoughts and that they put up a front to shield her from the realities of the world affecting her. Rachel eventually finds and “raises” an amorphous creature named Borne, who is a pretty big handful. While definitely not ...

If one needs a guide on how to be the most oblivious of deadbeat parents, they need only to look to the actions of Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . There’s nothing that says “World’s Worst Dad” like running out of the house, screaming after finding your eight-foot-something child looming over your sleeping form. Shelley’s entire novel, in essence, is about parenting and the relationships between fathers and their children - with the added element of being the first work of science fiction. Before getting into the analysis of the various facts, which point this towards being a parental “how-to”, it’s important to briefly mention Shelley’s own upbringing and how it relates to said analysis. Shelly was born to William Godwin, a philosopher, and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a well-known English suffragette who penned “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, in 1797. Two weeks after Shelley’s birth, Wollstonecraft died due to postpartum infections. Shelley’s rigor...