Dean Koontz's FRANKENSTEIN

Dean Koontz’s FRANKENSTEIN Book One: Prodigal Son - Prolific horror & suspense author Dean Koontz was originally approached to write the pilot and additional episodes of a mini-series for the USA Network. Martin Scorsese became interested in the concept and came aboard as Executive Producer. Sadly, the network wanted changes made to the show as conceived, causing both Koontz and then Scorsese to walk away from the project.

Koontz has decided to reshape the work into a trilogy, working with several other authors to bring his original concept out in prose form. This first book is co-written with Kevin J. Anderson, himself a science fiction writer (I’ve previously read an X-FILES novel by him, GROUND ZERO which I liked quite a bit.).

In this series neither Victor Frankenstein nor his creation met their doom as Mary Shelly wrote in her novel. It seems that the author took some fictional liberties with the true story as told to her by others. Following his initial murder spree and final battle with his maker the ‘monster’ roamed the world for decades finally finding peace in an Asian monastery. His creator also survived having found ways to extend his own life. Now Frankenstein, over two hundred years old but looking like a man in his forties, has taken up residence in New Orleans. Under the name Victor Helios he has begun producing dozens of beings with whom he plans on recreating the world in his image. Over the past decades Helios/Frankenstein has placed his creations in every institution which might be of value to his plans, or which might stand in his way. He has even created duplicates of some individuals killing the original and replacing them. As his first creation (who calls himself Deucalion, the son of Prometheus in Greek mythology) states Victor is now the monster, while he has become more human.

Anderson does a good job of bringing believability to Koontz’s characters. The only problem I had was that Anderson tries to be a bit too cute sometimes, throwing in cultural references in some inappropriate places. I don’t mind so much the human characters doing this, but you have to wonder why Victor’s creations would use them, since they are essentially ‘born’ educated and programmed by Frankenstein who holds such a distain for the culture of the Old Race as he calls those born of woman.

In the first book, some of the New Race have begun to question their programming and gone against the wishes of their creator. These improperly wired beings have drawn the attention of New Orleans detectives Carson O’Connor and her partner Michael Maddison. Their hunt for a serial killer (actually more than one they discover) and the discovery of Frankenstein’s plans are what drive the first book. The second, co-written by mystery & western writer Ed Gorman, will take up where this leaves off. I don’t know where Koontz will finally bring all this but I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the next few weeks.

Having reread Mary Shelly’s original work a few months ago, I was interested to see what other contemporary writers were doing with the characters. I’ve noted a couple of other books on the shelves also using one version of the monster or another. There’s just something about the idea of the creature which fascinates me and apparently lots of others.