E X T E N S I O N GOTHIC FICTION AND SCIENCE FICTION Frankenstein is partly rooted in1 the gothic tradition. It shares2 some features of the genre, such as the representation of outcasts (Frankenstein and the monster), the use of fantasy in order to escape the dull materialism of the age, the use of the supernatural in the creation of the monster, the use of the strange and the horrific, the use of the dream and the treatment of the femme fatale when Frankenstein describes Elizabeth. It is also a forerunner3 of some features of science fiction in the treatment of an artificial life, in its emphasis on estrangement4 and alienation of the characters and in the dehumanising use of technology. H.G. Wells The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), for example, was greatly influenced by Mary Shelley s masterpiece. Two of The Island of Dr Moreau s monsters. Gothicism is part of the Romantic Movement that started in the late eighteenth century and lasted to roughly three decades into the nineteenth century. The first novel that was later identified as gothic was Horace Walpole s Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story in 1764. The 1. root in: radicare. 2. share: condividere. 3. forerunner: precursore. 4. estrangement: estranazione. 70