Natural and Supernatural Phenomena: Matter Becoming Consciousness

Mary Shelley's Doctor Frankenstein's Monster and James Cameron's John Connor's Model 101 were very much creatures of their time. As their designations – Monster and Model – attest, they were conceived and projected into science fiction contexts that reflected the contemporary states of positivistic knowledge and experimentation at the periods of their conceptualisation. But although they are separated by two centuries of scientific progress, the fundamental questions invited by both characters and by those of their diegetic and extra-diegetic inventors, have not altered much. Foremost among these are the interrelated themes of the origin of sentient life and man's relationship with, and capacity for, intervention into the process of the creation of intelligent, living beings. As much as both stories interrogate the appropriateness of man's ‘playing God’, they demand reflection on the consequences of his having done so for society at large, for the designer, and for the created being.

Made at roughly the historical mid-way point between the first sound cinematic adaptation of Shelley's novel, the 1931 Universal Pictures production directed by James Whale, and Cameron's second Terminator film from 1991, was Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). While Kubrick's diegesis is stretched to cover an expansive period of human history and evolution, and addresses key ethical and ontological questions, in his narrative they are confronted centrally and explicitly. Character traits and the personality of the Artificial Intelligence entity HAL are designed with some degree of futuristic creative projection.