Riddle me this. When do science, AI, Republican politics, the Internet, and Frankenstein’s monster cross the line from fascinating to fearsome, daring to dangerous, experimental to egomaniacal, compelling to cautionary?

Knitting together a number of seemingly random threads, sometimes results in a sweater — although often it’s just a mis-sized sock with a bunched up toe. And mostly it just takes me down a rabbit hole that, while each side tunnel seems pretty promising at the time. . . So I just hold my Alice and jump into Wonderland.

I finished reading Our Hideous Progeny, a well-spun modern novel set in Victorian England some three decades after the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Predicated on the ‘truth’ of Shelley’s tale, it traces another ill-conceived attempt to ‘animate from the inanimate’ couched in the decidedly less tragic but equally misguided effort that ends (spoiler alert) with the bad guy getting his comeuppance, the ineffectual male fading into the woodwork, and the heroine / narrator finding lots of common ground with feminist scientists of the day. In short, a happy-ish ending with the ‘monster’ wending its way north where it presumably will reside contentedly thereafter.

Well, Alice, that’s leaving me pretty much hanging fire. Unfinished business being what it is, I am transported six decades in the rear view to the two-foot high stack of novels beside my college dorm shelf (that serves as a desk) and constituting the reading list for a second year novels course. These are arranged, more or less in the order in which they will likely be ‘read’ (aka, thinest on top, thickest on the bottom, anchored by Don Quixote). Weighing in at a mere 258 pages, Frankenstein beckons — but evidently not sufficient to actually make the cut. For, on any number of shelves it subsequently sat, uncracked. . . til now.

Shelley’s cautionary tale, prophetically subtitled A Modern Prometheus, chronicles (as all, who were less distracted by beer and bridge in earlier times, will know) the high cost of hubris — not to mention the fate of those who would (not to put too fine a point on it) f____ with Mother Nature or Father Zeus. Ever the trickster, old Prom is also credited with being science’s patriarch. (We may be inching our way toward the riddle’s solution!)

Our less than loveable monster was not ever thus (i.e., unloveable). Before his rather abrupt disillusionment, the demon was hot into self-improvement, courtesy of his extended (and frankly voyeuristic) observational phase. But the penny was beginning to drop:

Was man at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?

Sadly, once the switch is flipped (‘polarities’, actual and metaphoric being what they are), there is no middle ground — all virtue and good intention morph precipitously into evil and that, as they say, is that.

Which brings us to politics, AI, science, et al. The conundrum facing young Victor was, being a bit reductionist about it, ‘what do we do with a problem like a monster?’ (The Hills, after all, were the Swiss Alps,!) Dr. F had, in his youthful zeal not fully factored in the morality of his obsession. All well and good to build it. Now what, as the ‘creation’ by times, self-educates, becomes lonely, then gets a little pissed at being beaten and misunderstood — ultimately transforming into the consummate killing machine.

AI, for its part, has been hailed with equal parts worship and, increasingly, worry. Chatbots write great poetry, reproduce literature, make art, and, and, and. They also cheat on essay assignments, foster gender-bias, foment social media based hatred and misinformation, and, and, and. Delphi, a theoretically ‘ethical’ chatbot, when queried about the acceptability of smothering a baby with a pillow, responded that acting ‘sweetly and gently’ is acceptable (albeit condemning the actual, ‘unqualified’ act). Hmm.

The GOP’s current challenges present a similar dilemma. ‘Soooo… we built this monster in 2016. And now the f____er just won’t go away. Going about killing our base and now has his crosshairs set on wiping out small ‘d’ democracy. This was not the plan!’ Orange Jesus, indeed. Perhaps the more apt moniker: Orange Lazarus. Where’s a good ice floe when you need one?

Ah yes, the riddle. The short answer would seem to be ‘when there’s no moral core’. Truth be told, this was never a big ticket concern for most politicians. As with our Victor, ‘doing it’ was not the root issue. Living with it, the potential for misuse and ultimately abuse, is the issue. The Promethean legacy has apparently very popular ‘sequels’ — be it the dude who serves up his renewed liver on a regular basis, Shelley’s monster, Oppenheimer (next up on the reading list, gulp, is the American Prometheus), or OJ (that would be Orangeman!). No heart, no morality, no problem. . . until there is.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, an iconic figure of the 20th century, was a brilliant physicist who led efforts to build an atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress… (from a publisher’s summary).

(And, after that Rachel Maddow’s Prequel.)