As Robert Walton and his ship attempted to find a route to the North Pole, they discovered on a small ice flow a dog sled with an exhausted passenger, a man named Viktor Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus tells a cautionary story about technology. Using all the scientific learning and technology he could muster, Viktor Frankenstein literally and figuratively creates a monster—a monster he fears and who pursues him to the death.

Dr. Tiffany Schubert gave this introduction to Shelley’s novel to the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought as we considered The Ancient and Modern Challenges of Technology.