Mary Shelley Didn’t Just Invent The Science-Gone-Wrong Genre, She Also Pioneered Post-Apocalyptic Fiction In English

Frankenstein was not her only groundbreaking novel; in 1829, she published The Last Man, depicting England circa 2100 as a post-plague dystopia. “As with Frankenstein, Shelley was playing on some very real anxieties in Industrial Revolution-era society – anxieties that live on to the present day. And, just like with Frankenstein, she got flack for it.”