A Race of Daemons

This is the week which we finally finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. The book ended rather anticlimactically, with the sudden death of Frankenstein, but only after he swore that he would hunt and kill the monster he created. But this outcome was only a result of his refusal to make a female mate for the original monster, due to a fear of creating a master race of these daemons that would cause humanity to curse the name Frankenstein for all eternity. And to see Dr. Frankenstein's fears played out on a slightly modified scale and setting, we only need to look at the Super Mutants of the Fallout series.

The Fallout series depicts a post apocalyptic world that was completely decimated by a global thermonuclear war in which every country seemed to have a "scorched earth" policy. But in anticipation of this war, the US constructed underground habitats that would house citizens selected to carry on either individual characteristics of the human condition, some piece of technology or to continue a science experiment. One such vault was vault 87, the home of the species know colloquially as the "Super Mutants".

Vault 87 was responsible for the continuation of research into Forced Evolutionary Viruses (FEVs) that were designed, much like Frankenstein's monster, to be a better class of human so that the human race would stand a chance in the world after the war. This is not what happens, at least not immediately. There is an accident in one of the FEV strains and it cause many of the subjects to mutate into these tall yellow creatures with super human strength and limited mental faculties, with the population having varying levels of both. Some subject retain their cognitive abilities, while others grow to the size of buildings and kill anything that doesn't look like them. After vault 87 is opened these monsters essentially have free reign over the landscape as they are also not effected by lingering radioactivity and destroy and mutilate much of the human population that created them, and had their fair share of murder and other things you'll have to play the games to find out. Which would confirm Frankenstein's rational behind not giving the monster a companion. However, it is discovered later in the game that the FEV strain has been corrected by a group known as the "Enclave", and it aids in the creation of super humans. But this raises a more interesting question. Had Frankenstein continued his work, instead of giving up, could he have succeeded in his goal; or would he be forever doomed to failure?