It’s nice to see Frankenstein having a moment again. The classic tale of science run amok mixed with the mysteries of life and death, the wonders of creation and the deeply personal yearning to belong is so well suited for our age — or any human age, for that matter.

In fact, the Frankenstein tale may be perfect for our time. While Mary Shelley wrote it during the Industrial Revolution, perhaps with the new technocrats in mind, it applies just as well to our new AI overlords who are creating things they don’t quite understand and which may one day border on life. It speaks to our anxieties around progress and what sort of responsibility the tech elite and scientists have to society.

Of course, Victor Frankenstein and the creature are not just ciphers for ideas about technology and progress. They are also compelling characters because of their complexity and human condition. Who among us hasn’t wanted to stop death from claiming those we love? Certainly Shelley’s own personal tragedies are reflected in the book here, as she lost her mother shortly after childbirth, a half-sister committed suicide, and two of her children died before the publication of Frankenstein.

I suspect most of us in the current day may identify with the monster, an articulate, philosophical but lonely creature who can find no enduring role in society, who seeks love, enlightenment, belonging — who seeks more — but is thwarted by others at every turn. The monster is an everyman, a stand-in for all of us in our ragged humanity.

Sadly, all those who fear the monster for its difference and seek to drive it away, to banish it from their community, are also us in this undying tale.

Frankenstein is an early tale of science fiction, a Gothic horror, a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of life and death — and perhaps what constitutes a good and meaningful life. As much as the book is a conversation with science and philosophy, though, it is also a tale preoccupied with literary creation and influence. It is a book of contrasting stories, with Victor and the creature each telling their own tale, while infused through with mythology (Prometheus, the Bible) and literary allusion (Paradise Lost, Inferno, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). The novel was even born from a literary contest of sorts among Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori to come up with ghost stories. (Polidori came up with one of the first vampire tales from the same contest.) The entire book is stories within stories.

The literary magic of Frankenstein is why I decided to include the creature in The Dead Hamlets, the second book of my Cross series of urban fantasy thrillers. It’s a tale of Shakespearean ghosts and literary creations that won’t die, so who better to help the immortal rogue Cross track down a mystery ghost born of a work of literature than another mysterious undead character born of a classic of literature?

(If you’ve read The Dead Hamlets, then you may be pleased to learn that Cross and Mary Shelley’s most famous character will cross paths again.)

Frankenstein speaks to so much in our culture – anxiety around death, the mysteries of life, the wonder of science and technology but concern about how we use science and technology, the act of creativity, the longing for connection, the magic of storytelling and so much more. At long last Frankenstein’s creature has found himself to be an integral part of the human community he so longed to join.