Frankenstein — Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18 years old, producing simultaneously the first science fiction novel, the first literary exploration of artificial life, and one of literature's greatest examinations of the moral responsibilities of creation. Victor Frankenstein's abandonment of his creation — not the monster's violence but Frankenstein's failure of parental duty — is the novel's central ethical argument, as relevant to AI development in 2026 as it was to galvanism in 1818.