Although we don't generally think of Mary Shelley as a sci-fi writer (after all, she was writing in the 1800s and is largely associated with Romanticism), she's responsible for bringing us one of the most important sci-fi works of all time: Frankenstein.

Frankenstein (1818)

We can't talk about sci-fi without talking about Shelley's Frankenstein, about the scientist Victor Frankenstein, and the corpse-collage creature (he's sort of a man but is pretty creepy looking) he creates in a wacko experiment.

Shelley was only nineteen when she wrote this novel. Dang. Our greatest accomplishment at age nineteen was baking chocolate chip cookies without burning them.

She may have been young, but this story about a scientific experiment gone awry became an instant classic. And even today it's a huge part of popular culture. When we hear the name "Frankenstein," we immediately conjure up an image of a green dude with stitches running along his forehead and metal knobs sticking out of his neck. The monster doesn't exactly look like that in the original novel, but he's still quite scary.

The Last Man (1826)

Mary Shelley was doing apocalyptic science fiction way before the apocalypse became a staple of sci-fi in the 20th century. The Last Man is set in an apocalyptic time in the 21st century (Uh-oh. That's our own time, isn't it?). It's a tale about a plague that's kills off pretty much everyone except for one (yup) last man.

With its focus on a distant future time and an apocalyptic world, this novel by Mary Shelley fits right into the science fiction genre. And hey, it's pretty awesome that one of the earliest writers of science fiction was a woman… given that today it's still very much a dude-centric discipline.

Chew On This

Mary Shelley has given us one of the greatest sci-fi characters in the history of sci-fi: the monster in her novel Frankenstein. Plunge right into an analysis of this character here.

Shelley was writing apocalyptic sci-fi way before it became a staple in the 20th century. Delve into her novel The Last Man.