electricity theme
The science behind those physical phenomenon associated with charged particles in motion is explored.
Notes
Electricity is almost ubiquitous in the human world since the early 20th century and the effects of electricity can often be noted in modern stories without being in any way remarkable. Electric appliances typically form the background setting of the story and are not themes. Nor does a simple lightning strike or passing thunderstorm offer sufficient grounds for applying the theme unless more is said about the matter. The theme also does not apply merely when someone is zapped by what seems like an electrical discharge in an action or sci-fi story.
Examples
Professor Carbonic invented a life restoring, brain-injectable serum that worked by stimulating neuronal electrical production in "Advanced Chemistry" (1927).
17 total · 3 major · 13 minor
| Story | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| movie: Big Man Japan (2007) | major | The novelty of electricity in connection with its potential to grow an ordinary sized man to approximately 30 meters tall when applied at high voltages was much featured. |
| movie: Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (1994) | major | The novelty of electricity in connection with its potential to bring life to dead tissue was much featured. |
| tz2002e1x11 | major | Tyler was struck by lightning while working on the telephone wires; he became "charged" somehow and measured his capacity with a multimeter several times; he stuck his head in a microwave oven in order to enhance his powers. |
| ftt1982e6x01 | minor | A man at the village inn spoke of Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment. |
| movie: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) | minor | Electricity was used to animate the corpse that was to become the bride of Frankenstein. |
| movie: Frankenhooker (1990) | minor | Jeff harnessed the power of electricity to revive his fiancée Elizabeth from the dead. |
| movie: Frankenstein (1931) | minor | Dr. Frankenstein used the power of electricity to bring life to inanimate matter. |
| movie: Frankenstein (2025) | minor | Victor Frankenstein used electricity, harnessed through lightning, to bring to life a patchwork man assembled from the body parts of hanged criminals and fallen soldiers. |
| movie: Frankenstein: The College Years (1991) | minor | College dorm roommates Mark and Jay harnessed the power of electricity to revive Frankenstein's monster in a basement laboratory. The monster referred to an electrical discharge as its "mama". |
| movie: Ghost in the Machine (1993) | minor | This explanation was given for how the serial killer's consciousness came to inhabit a computer: an MRI was making a precise record of the electrical activity in his brain at the moment of his death, and, by chance a passing storm caused a power surge in the hospital computer that transfered the impression of his mind into a much more powerful computer where it was possible for his mind to somehow become activated. |