Being a little more than halfway through the book, I think it is now safe to state that the technical term for Elizabeth Hand's Pandora's Bride (2007) is crackfic.
It is quite wonderful.
"Dr. Pretorius said that someday a woman will write of the New Eve. So I will be the New Pandora. I will not be any man's bride or any man's toy. Whatever strengths I possess, whatever I have hidden inside me, whatever I unleash upon men, I will do so knowingly . . . Pandora. I am Pandora."
The first chapter presents us with a more or less straightforward revision of the final moments of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935 and one of my favorite films), in which it is revealed that far from perishing neatly—"We belong dead!"—the Bride instead rescued Dr. Pretorius from the collapsing laboratory, leaving Frankenstein's nameless creation to perish in the flames alone. Far more than a monster's mindless mate, she has the wit and will to be her own Prometheus, stealing fire from the men who would be gods, renaming herself against the myth. The style is not quite a pastiche of Shelley, but it's close enough for government work: antique, but sly. And then we hit the second chapter.
"Yes, times are very difficult for the working people . . . And the government is precarious and corrupt. I wonder where it will all lead."
"Straight to Hell . . . Or to Berlin. Same difference."
Cue the Kurt Weill, as we are plunged into a freewheeling mashup of the Weimar Republic and its cinematic mythologies, in which it only makes sense that Dr. Pretorius' assistant should be the somnambulist Cesare, or that Professor Unrat should have taught not only the ambitious Henry Frankenstein but the even madder Rotwang, while an automaton dances at the Mondkellar and a mysterious murderer roams the streets, whistling Grieg. Did I mention the English lovers, Christopher and Wystan? Or the showgirl Lulu? Oh, and the carnivorous horse, which is damned if I know where (since it's too early for Girl Genius) that came from—it's an Expressionist's grab bag, all magnificently over the top enough to gladden the fey and fabulous heart of Ernest Thesiger.
"I think I am too . . . specialized . . . for your friends."
"You'd be surprised."
In short, this is exactly the kind of book I want to be reading after failing to fend off a Richter 9 headache: it is better than drugs. Now I really have no excuse not to have a Bride of Frankenstein icon.
It is quite wonderful.
"Dr. Pretorius said that someday a woman will write of the New Eve. So I will be the New Pandora. I will not be any man's bride or any man's toy. Whatever strengths I possess, whatever I have hidden inside me, whatever I unleash upon men, I will do so knowingly . . . Pandora. I am Pandora."
The first chapter presents us with a more or less straightforward revision of the final moments of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935 and one of my favorite films), in which it is revealed that far from perishing neatly—"We belong dead!"—the Bride instead rescued Dr. Pretorius from the collapsing laboratory, leaving Frankenstein's nameless creation to perish in the flames alone. Far more than a monster's mindless mate, she has the wit and will to be her own Prometheus, stealing fire from the men who would be gods, renaming herself against the myth. The style is not quite a pastiche of Shelley, but it's close enough for government work: antique, but sly. And then we hit the second chapter.
"Yes, times are very difficult for the working people . . . And the government is precarious and corrupt. I wonder where it will all lead."
"Straight to Hell . . . Or to Berlin. Same difference."
Cue the Kurt Weill, as we are plunged into a freewheeling mashup of the Weimar Republic and its cinematic mythologies, in which it only makes sense that Dr. Pretorius' assistant should be the somnambulist Cesare, or that Professor Unrat should have taught not only the ambitious Henry Frankenstein but the even madder Rotwang, while an automaton dances at the Mondkellar and a mysterious murderer roams the streets, whistling Grieg. Did I mention the English lovers, Christopher and Wystan? Or the showgirl Lulu? Oh, and the carnivorous horse, which is damned if I know where (since it's too early for Girl Genius) that came from—it's an Expressionist's grab bag, all magnificently over the top enough to gladden the fey and fabulous heart of Ernest Thesiger.
"I think I am too . . . specialized . . . for your friends."
"You'd be surprised."
In short, this is exactly the kind of book I want to be reading after failing to fend off a Richter 9 headache: it is better than drugs. Now I really have no excuse not to have a Bride of Frankenstein icon.
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