Frankenstein Rex

FRANKENSTEIN REX

Adam Roberts

Gollancz hardback £25.  

**** (4 stars) review by Tony Lee

A dark-fantasy actioner, I, Frankenstein (2013), borrows a few key images from The Matrix (1999), a landmark SF movie that was cleverly parodied by Adam Roberts, as The Matrix Derided (2004). I note this because FRANKENSTEIN REX explores, and thoroughly exploits, a rich seam of ‘chosen-one’ super-heroics, about a re-animated hyper-being. A giant, he’s not quite human, but far more than just a (zombified?) jigsaw-of-man(kind), taking on the familiar name of his creator. The King has a practical, and yet curiously mythical, immortality that seems an existential side-effect of his seemingly invulnerable condition. This is a very much a political superhero novel, for sure, though it plays out like some satirical tract from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a subgenre work by Jonathan Hickman, or one of the weirder comics by Warren Ellis, instead of any typically-costumed champions, published by Marvel, or DC. 

FRANKENSTEIN REX by Adam Roberts

This story of a huge creature (not named Adam) obviously draws upon the well-known basics of Frankenstein lore, such as the lifeless body on a slab in a (mad?) scientist’s lab. But the timeline presented here is wryly askew, even if not essentially fragmented. Its franchising mentality, as a spin-off book, is wildly divergent, and just as innovative as previous narratives inspired by Mary Shelley’s classic, such as Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things (filmed by Yorgos Lanthimos, in 2023). Detailing of this epic alternative-history, with utopian aspects - like a global currency (‘franks’, natch!), collides with sundry often-subversive comic-book themes. Meetings with prominent historical figures, who are nowadays so popularised-by-media, that a refreshing take on famous conquerors is quite surprising (to me, since I rarely tackle alt. history).   

There’s a lot of business here concerning an English assassin, who might be a witty reference to ‘Jerry’ in The Final Programme (either Moorcock’s novel or Fuest’s cult-film), while the use of hi-tech firearms recalls The Day Of The Jackal. In captivity, the Englishman suffers ghastly abuses by French police, ultimately under absurdist commands from the comically fat, guv’nor. These ‘torture-porn’ chapters often seem like a morbid stand-in for the grotesque body-horrors that are expected now, after so many gruesomely depicted variations in the majority of Frankenstein movie adaptations. 

Jokey nerdisms like a “Moebius knot” might prepare readers for the author’s fondness for lesser-known allegorical references, like describing the tyrant Frankenstein’s rule as “procrustean oppression”. Any postmodern satire never slips from thrilling high-wire action into gross parody mode. Lyrical descriptions of terrorist chaos, and European warfare, remind us that “Poetry is the sea, lapping the coastline of our consciousness.” A hundredweight of keenly imagined what-ifs..? are cunningly balanced on a single fingertip, and although it’s not all done in the best possible taste, its revisionism maintains a certain aplomb. And yet, while Roberts’ engaging story attempts to greatly expand the literary power of the original, and also re-define the Frankenstein media mythology, it is, occasionally, so perfectly on-the-nose that you can almost hear a ‘boop!’.