Frankenstein's Footsteps

New England Journal of Medicine

Frankenstein's Footsteps is original, provocative, instructive, and consistently interesting. Its appeal to historians is self-evident, but molecular biologists, geneticists, and physicians with literary inclinations will surely find this book worthwhile.

Library Journal

This book is a combination of history, biology, and genetics, literary and film criticism, and bioethics debate. A senior lecturer in science communication in the department of science and technology studies at University College London, Turney has many interesting things to say about how biological science is communicated to the public, how the story of Frankenstein has conjured up in popular culture certain images of science and scientists, and how those images have changed over time. That we can learn something from how sf and film influence public perceptions of science is a very good notion and an important one to consider, especially in light of recent experiments on monkey head transplants and sheep cloning. Unfortunately, Turney's academic prose style makes his book difficult to read, but it would still be a useful addition to a history or science communication collection.--Margaret Henderson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Libs., NY