Ruthven; or the Modern Prometheus
-by Mary Godwin
-here she doesn't marry Percy Shelley for many decades (as his wife doesn't kill herself), and so she is known as Mary Godwin to posterity
-but she's his lover throughout and even goes by "Mary Shelley" often
-pretty influential British Isles radicals are her family
-Mary's first Grand Tour trip succeeds fully and so she does not go to Lake Geneva during the Year Without a Summer
-instead she's in the UK seeing the Industrial Revolution with all it treats living workers as interchangeable parts and an uncaring elite
-and the Luddite movement which she isn't 100% a fan of but sympathizes with and it is these workers, half-living, who she writes about
-also her stillbirth influences her
-to write about something which looks like a man, but is not a man and yet somehow is
-protagonist is someone with the vibe of this guy )
-named Lord Victor Ruthven
-obsessed with life and seeks to create it
-in part because of a desire to create a new labor force to allow man to labor freely
-and in part because he sees the old automata of old and is impressed
-sculps an automaton able to do the labor of man
-seeks to create a being most beautiful with clockwork masked by a skinlike surface
-but instead creates a being who looks utterly lifeless
-Victor is horrified by what he has created
-sends the Machine to work in one of his factories
-as a machine - not a man - to do the hard labor
-learns language and rest of knowledge, all learned on his cylinder of cards
-and attains knowledge
-with this, the Machine runs well out of Edinburgh
-and yet, is imbued by life, whether by powers of the occult or otherwise
-then outside all people look at him, unnatural, in horror
-except one blind man who he talks to in a civilized manner
-thus it is that the Machine becomes almost, but not quite, a man
-when he tries to save a girl her father shoots her
-increasingly comes to hate humanity and kills someone in a lust of anger
-goes to Edinburgh to meet who he learns from the one he killed who must be his creator - and takes flesh with him
-at Edinburgh, the Machine learns of his maker
-and hates and hates him for giving him such an existence and abandoning him to miserable pursuits
-storms into Victor's chief factory, and destroys it along with murdering his wife
-and leaves for him but the rotting carcass of his home
-and when Victor returns he sees the Machine, threaten him to give him flesh of the man he killed so he may become a human
-when Victor refuses, the Machine rips off his fake face - and Victor comes face to face with a set of gears
-in the end, the Machine's logic is trammeled by this desire to become a human
-and when the Machine is in his shop, Victor rips open his gears and dismantles him
-the Machine is painfully wounded, but yet does not stop and only cries out in pain
-finally, Victor travels to the Highlands to destroy the Machine once and for all
-recounts his story to a sheriff (framing story) before taking the Machine to Glen Croe to kill it in the ice
-novel is a great success
-the Machine known to posterity as "Ruthven" by title
-remembered often by followers of Ideology > Associationism as a metaphor for the working man
-and as a demonstration of the hubris of man by others especially at the time
-people still unsure today as to whether the Machine is truly alive or simply a simulacrum thereof
-future adaptations portray machine as hydraulic, but with mercury running across body rather than water
-as a supreme version of hydraulic Analyzers
-mercury because so occult
-and skin made of rubber which disturbingly melts
On The Slave Power
-a four volume work
-Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy (1859)
-Volume II: The Emergence of the Robber Knights (1864)
-Volume III: The Reduction of Man to Subsistence (1868)
-Volume IV: Theory of the Imperium of Slavery (1882)
-by Frederick Bauer, a German immigrant to New York City
-who quickly becomes part of anti-slavery movement
-and he becomes part of anti-slavery newspaper
-first volume written and published in 1859
-for this, a New York mob beats him up but he lives and refuses to let them stop him
-quickly becomes founding document of anti-slavery movement and cited as beginning the Liberty and Union War (1868-76)
-and so are the next two volumes
-while last volume gives scientific foundation to Antillean War (1880-4)
-a lengthy set of volumes much compared in impact to Common Sense but quite different
-based on Schelling's theory of logic to critique the morality, politics, and economics of slavery
-but all with a scientific tone
-first volume is a more general book condemning all three in twain
-to show all three elements are fundamentally connected
-second volume deals specifically with how slavery empowers a class of aristocrats to destroy republicanism
-culminating in the reduction of all Americans to the same state of slavery as the slaves
-third volume deals with how slave labor leads to reduction of price of labor of free workers
-leading, ultimately, to free workers reduced to subsistence
-fourth volume argues that slavery in one place leads to the reduction of freedom everywhere else
-that true freedom requires the end of slavery everywhere or else the slave power of one country will impose it everywhere else
-a clear argument for support of Antillean War (1880-4)
-and with political environment forever changed by Liberty and Union War (1868-76) it's also a lot more frank about the horror of slavery