A Frankenstein Love Story

[Agent Quill]

A long time ago I read a book, forgive me, because my memory is a bit murky. In it there is a woman and a man, I think he loves her and either killed women to bring his love back to life, or he took parts from already dead to bring her back. She has moments where she remembers their lives and it screws with her own mind.

I believe it spans through time. It was not erotica, there might have been a romantic moment or two, but it still feels like a PG13 type rating. Maybe not, but either way, I'd really like to find the title and re-read, see if my memory of my fondness for the story holds true.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I know this is going to sound odd but you know that there is a book called the Bride of Frankenstein and another Frankenstein's Brijde?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ravensquawk]

The closest one I know to this is "Remember'd Kisses" by Michael F. Flynn.

It is a nanotechnology love story. I read it in "Nanotech" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, which also has "Blood Music" and "Recording Angel".

There isn't one happy or encouraging story in the bunch. If you want to read speculative fiction on how nanotechnology could harm, read this.

It's been a long time, but here goes the memory:

No killing, no Frankenstein's monster, but it is nanotech after all. Both people in the young couple are top nanotech research doctors in the world. The man becomes widowed; I think his wife died in an auto accident.

He brings home a homeless woman who resembles his late wife, and using their unpublished, incomplete research, administers nanotech treatments to her. Without her consent or even knowledge, I recall.

He is a sympathetic character, a grieving modern person struck by tragedy. His brilliance and laboratory access enable him to become the touch of "mad scientist", but a sympthetic one: where an ordinary person stricken by grief might find a new partner who resembles his or her late partner, he has the nanotech and genetics skill to transform a new partner into even more resemblance.

The woman gradually comes to resemble his late wife even more.

It is not a horror story like most of the other stories in the anthology are, so much as unspeakably sad.

Her own memories become mixed with, and subsumed by, the dead woman's life memories. Living a decent life in a nice home with a partner who loves her in his own grief-deranged way, is far better than the homelessness she knew.

But having conflicting memories of two different people, and being with this man who brought her to his home and calls her by his late wife's name, gives her an identity crisis.