The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination

by Philip Ball

With The Modern Myths , brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales.

Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman , many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth?

In The Modern Myths , Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mythology, History, Psychology, Literary Criticism, Folklore, Philosophy

436 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 2021

About the author

Philip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.

Reviews

[Brian Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Ball is one of our most esteemed science science writers, so it's easy to think of his new book The Modern Myths as a hobby project. However, Ball brings to this exploration of the idea that stories about the likes of Robinson Crusoe, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and Batman are our modern day myths the same erudition, attention to detail and careful research as he does to writing about the physical world.

Ball's thesis is that there is something about certain stories that enables them to escape the bounds of their origin to mutate and become something quite different - and further reaching - than the original. Often, many of us haven't ever read the originals. And if we have, they can be quite disappointing. As Ball points out, to become a myth, it helps a lot of the original work is ambiguous in interpretation and loosely written. As a result, we are unlikely ever to find 'great literature' taking on mythical form - it is far more likely to come from genre fiction and more recently other media such as graphic novels.

Along the way we discover a lot about the original works and the way that they have inspired a whole range of other versions and stories that have the myth at their heart, even if they have totally different protagonists. If anything, given the importance of malleability and spinning off variants, Ball spends a bit too long on the original and its creator in each case: one thing that seems pretty much impossible to do is to consciously create a myth. It was quite fun when Ball got onto a chapter dedicated to other myths-in-the-making to try to guess what might fit in this class. Before reading on, I guessed the James Bond books, which Ball pleasingly then listed as a possible case.

Inevitably with such a subjective concept, it's unlikely that anyone will agree entirely with Ball's assessment - that's part of the fun of reading a book like this. I found it quite amusing that when talking of Sherlock Holmes, we are told that he and Watson cannot be fixed points in a changing age, as if they were, ‘the works of Conan Doyle would be like those of Dickens or Austen, treasured but immutable.' But, in fact, Jane Austen's work has relatively recently had a fair amount of the treatment Ball uses to identify a myth. Think, for example, of Lost in Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Bridgerton and Death Comes to Pemberley.

Arguably, the humour in myth and in the development of myth is the thing that is most missing from this book - Ball's approach is mostly deadly serious (with the exception of the 1960s Batman TV series). This comes through, for example, in his dismissive attitude to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably by far the most innovative development of the Dracula myth, both in the way it subverts the structure and in its brilliant humour - perhaps he hasn't watched it.

Overall, though, this is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the nature of writing and storytelling and the way that we as human beings respond to story and it responds to us. It's a must-have for lovers of myth and genre fiction alike.

[Dan Cassino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started off really liking Ball’s work here, but the more I read, the more I soured on it. Ball, who’s best known as a natural science writer, is tackling anthropology here, making the argument that some modern (past 300 years) stories have attained mythic status: Robinson Crusoe, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, The War of the Worlds, and Batman. He discusses each in turn, talking through their origins, reception at the time, and the varied ways that their narratives have been used and abused since. If you notice that there isn’t much in the way of women’s representation on the list, he does, too, and is noticeably embarrassed by it.
While he puts some effort into trying to argue that these stories fit existing definitions of myth, his wrangling with functional definitions is about the least convincing part of the book. His main criterion for myth is status is his own, and a reasonable one: that the story can be utterly divorced from it’s initial conception, and subject to all sorts of meanings and interpretations, depending on the needs of the society at the time.
All told, Ball presents a lot of evidence, but little in the way of theory: suppose that we buy his argument that these are now mythic stories. What does it matter? What does it tell us about culture, about the human condition? Ball doesn’t have an answer. His focus, instead, is on these individual narratives. As someone who likes anthropology and pop culture, I’m with him on this- it’s a lot more fun, even if it makes it not especially useful as a work of cultural anthropology.
But as I got into the later chapters, I had the sinking feeling that maybe Ball wasn’t quite as expert in the topic as I would have hoped. Perhaps because I know a lot more about Batman than about Robinson Crusoe, I was more than a little surprised to see Ball taking Bob Kanye’s claims about Batman’s origins seriously (he was a notorious fabricator who peddled demonstrable lies on the subject until his death, and even on his gravestone). I was also not expecting Ball, or anyone, to attempt a re-evaluation of Frederic (Seduction of the Innocent) Wertham, who he seems to see as mostly on the ball, if a little misguided (he wasn’t). It also seemed odd to talk about Batman as a mythic character without even mentioning the hordes of imitators (from Marvel’s Moon Knight to Joe Casey’s deconstruction in “Sex”), or any of the animated versions of the character. Or to argue that there isn’t, and will never be, a last Batman story (like it or not, that’s Miller’s “The Dark Knight”). Talking about the bounce back from the 66 TV show without mentioning “New Look” Batman- I was beginning to think maybe Ball knew less than he was letting on.
By the last substantive chapter, nominally about potential new myths, but mostly just about George Romero, “I am Legend” and zombies (which Ball doesn’t consider mythic, despite fitting his definitions, because… I dunno), and its reference to “Jack” Snyder, and the malls of Philadelphia, I was more than a little disappointed. So it’s not a serious academic work- that would be fine if it were an expert analysis of the stories he’s talking about. But if it’s not even that? What are we doing? I enjoyed the book for most of the run, but was left ultimately disappointed. If you take it as a set of brief histories of the cultural impact of the stories he talks about, it’s fine- but it could have been a lot more.

[Geoffrey Hagberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is it: a cultural history of several modern stories we all can't agree how to interpret and all keep retelling our own ways.

Why I like it: The "cultural history" part of my summary above is important for setting expectations here. Ball's work throughout most of this book is to lay out an impressively broad range of research into related media properties, social contexts, biographies, critical and academic analyses, and various commentaries. Each chapter is spent largely weaving webs of all that material, with surprisingly accessible and enjoyable style.

However, Ball stops short of providing much of his own analysis, and what he does provide is sparingly hinted at throughout the book only to be somewhat dramatically reframed in the last chapter. You'd be forgiven for reading three-hundred-something pages here and thinking that all Ball's trying to get at is that myths arise from stories that are told so poorly, so ambiguously, so clumsily, that other people want to retell those stories again and again just to tell it better, with a different focus, or with some application of their own craft. But that isn't entirely the point, as Ball does clarify in the last ten pages, and there's nuance to the role that plot and character have in shaping what stories can become myth.

So, what you get is a lot of interesting perspectives on a collection of stories that are fascinating in their own right, but not a lot of analysis of why those stories matter so much to the modern public and not a particularly coherent view of why myths are made at all beyond the few interjected comments from the author scattered amidst the rest of the history.

You might also like: Ball has some comments about myths in-the-works today, noting the zombie mythos particularly, which would be a good source for additional reading/watching: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and of course The Walking Dead (the comics, show, or games). I'd also point to the myth-making potential in the game-player-turned-rebel-against-dystopia genre that's been prevalent to young adult fiction in the past decade or so--The Hunger Games being the prototype, The Maze Runner another good example, and even Ready Player One fitting some of that same story.

[Nick Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing assessment of key works of fiction that have reached mythical status in our culture, reoccurring in new works regularly, and why they are important to us. Fun read, as well as great historical insights.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting take on seven IPs that have entered our collective cultural consciousness such that everyone is familiar with them even if -- or perhaps particularly if -- they've never read the originating work.

There were three glaring errors in the text that should have been caught by editors or proofreaders. At the top of page 189, "who he has never seen abroad in daylight" should be "whom he has never seen abroad in daylight." In the second paragraph on page 226, "the stress and unease that precedes or follows a seismic shock" should be "the stress and unease that precede or follow a seismic shock;" the subject is plural, and the verb should agree in number. Most amusingly, on page 326 in the chapter on Batman, the author refers, in a list of Bat-gadgets, to the "Batmerang," which should, of course, be the Batarang; the Batmerang sounds like something Alfred would serve up for dessert.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some stories are so common and well-known, so often retold and reworked and referenced, that they have become part of the collective consciousness. Everyone knows these stories without ever having to read the original source material. Some are well-known for the superb quality of their storytelling (Shakespeare) and some for their popularity (Star Wars), but a particular set are so ubiquitous because they reflect society and can be used to represent a wide variety of views, beliefs, and situations common to the culture. These are what Ball calls myths. And he has identified a set of stories that have originated in the past few centuries because they are mirrors for life—and its associated anxieties, hopes, and issues—that has come with industrialization onward. These are the Modern Myths.

Each modern myth is associated with a particular author and piece of literature, but is much more than that name. They are stories that have been told over and over again by countless people in countless forms—on stage, in movies, in comics, and more. Literary critics do not consider them particularly well-written, and it is this precise feature that creates the opportunity for readers to find various interpretations and meanings in the stories. Ultimately, the stories stretch and change and grow to reflect the psyche of society and its concerns at various points in time. The myths are mirrors that reflect culture and conduits for it to express itself. "'Maybe every ten years Batman has to go through an evolution to keep up with the times,' [character co-creator] Bob Kane once suggested."

Ball has identified the following modern myths (in chronological order):

- Stranded on a deserted island (Robinson Crusoe)
- Creator of artificial life (Frankenstein)
- Hidden inner beast (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
- Sexually attractive parasite (Dracula)
- Overpowering alien invasion (The War of the Worlds)
- Ultra-logical detective (The Sherlock Holmes Stories)
- Vigilante law enforcer (Batman)

And the possibly emerging—though it’s too early to tell—myth of zombies.

It’s a fascinating book. It’s both a work of deep literary criticism and perceptive cultural analysis. The breadth and depth of Ball's knowledge is amazing. The writing is dense but not difficult, and Ball is able to make it entertaining. I found the work engaging, thought-provoking, and resonant. For someone interested in the power of stories, it was delightful.

Some excerpts:

Myths are promiscuous; they were postmodern before the concept existed, infiltrating and being shaped by popular culture. To discern their content, we need to look at comic books and B-movies as well as at Romantic poetry and German Expressionist cinema. We need to peruse the scientific literature, books of psychoanalysis, and made-for-television melodramas. Myths are not choosy about where they inhabit, and I am not going to be choosy about where to find them.

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They don’t have morals. They explore human questions that are irresolvable, and they are polysemic: able to seed many different interpretations.

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Stories are at their most mythically fecund when they don’t entirely make sense.

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The key to the mythic mode is ambivalence.

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The point about modern myths is that they not just permit but positively invite new readings beyond their author’s horizon.

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It is the narrative nature of myths that allow them to do their cultural work. . . . there are “certain things stories do that simpler statements cannot.” They help us to refine our skills, our thoughts, our conception of the world, Johnston says, by allowing us vicariously and without actual hazard to place ourselves in new situations, to consider the responses of the characters, “weighing their choices and considering whether we would do the same under similar circumstances.” Ideas formulated as stories are congruent with our experience of the world—it is not simply for the purposes of entertainment but more for the purpose of aiding cognition that they take this form.

So then, what kind of stories serve this role? Fantastical ones often work best: in myth, says Levi-Strauss, “everything becomes possible.” Such stories, says Johnston, “can coax us to look beyond the witnesses of our five sense and imagine that another reality exists, in addition to the reality that we experience every day.” The very departure from realism that has led mythical narrative to be derided and belittled in the modern literature of the fantastic, in Gothic, horror, and science-fiction novels, is a key enabling feature of the work of myth. . . .

I think we are all adherents of the modern myths I explore in this book, simply by virtue of the fact that we know the core stories and recognize them as being deeply embedded in our culture—and because we want to hear them, again and again, and to juggle with their implications.

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What is it, then, that distinguishes modern myths from the exploits of Thor or Theseus? It is this: these stories could not have been told in earlier times, because their themes did not yet exist. Modern myths explore dilemmas, obsessions, and anxieties specific to the condition of modernity.

It’s this novelty that explains why modern myths are being created at all: because the modern world confronts us with questions and problems that have no precedent in antiquity. Modern industrialized cultures face challenges that our ancestors did not: in the search for meaning within an increasingly secular society; in the disintegration of close-knit community and family structures; in the opportunities and perils presented by science and technology. And so our new myths deal with issues of identity and status, individualism, isolation, and alienation, power and impotence, technological transformation, invasion and annihilation. They speak of scientific discovery and spiritual ennui, sexual dysfunction and erotic displacement, dystopia and apocalypse. Modern myths do not feature kings and queens, dragons and heroes. They draw less distinction between hero and villain, human and monster. We ourselves play the roles of gods, and of course we are as vain, fallible, and compromised as the deities of Olympus and Asgard ever were. The evil forces, likewise, do not manifest as demons and malign deities but lurk inside us all.

Myth is where we go to work out our psychic quandaries: to explore questions that do not have definitive answers, to seek purpose and meaning in a world beyond our power to control or comprehend. By looking at the narratives that have become modern myths, we can examine the contemporary psyche and reveal some of the dilemmas and anxieties of our age: what we dream, what we fear. These stories provide a mental map of our dark thoughts. They are more honest than we dare to be.

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Because these works are not striving to be “high art,” they have the luxury of bluntness. They are without guile, as myths need to be. And they do not need to reshape some generative text, for the text is itself continually co-created, adapted, and modified. It is this relinquishing of narrative control to society that is likely to shape the modern myths of the future, which is why they seem likely to arise in media other than traditional literature.

[Prof. Purple · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Myths We Manufacture: A Review of The Modern Myths by Philip Ball

Since the Enlightenment, Western civilization has indulged in the charming illusion that myths belong to the past—that they are the intellectual artifacts of pre-scientific minds, swept away by reason and progress. This is, of course, nonsense. Myths are not relics to be entombed in the past; they are living, evolving, and—to the occasional despair of logicians—more influential than facts.

In The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination, Philip Ball argues, persuasively and with no small amount of literary finesse, that myths are not merely remembered but are created anew with each generation. The ancient Greeks had their pantheon; we have Frankenstein, Dracula, and Batman. His book is a wide-ranging, intellectually ambitious exploration of how certain stories have transcended their origins to become, in his estimation, the modern equivalents of myth—self-replicating narratives that take on lives of their own, perpetually adapted, reshaped, and reinterpreted in accordance with contemporary anxieties.

Ball’s book is, at its core, an attempt to answer a fascinating question: What, exactly, makes a myth?
What Is a Myth, Anyway?

The word myth is notoriously slippery, a term that shifts meaning depending on who wields it. To the scholar, myth is an essential cultural product, a way of encoding fundamental truths. To the politician, myth is often something to be manufactured, shaped, and sold. And to the journalist, myth is merely another word for “falsehood.”

Ball, sensibly, steers clear of such simplistic definitions. His focus is not on myths as lies or fabrications but as cultural narratives that persist, morph, and spread. He begins by identifying a handful of stories that, though originating in literature or pop culture, have acquired the unmistakable staying power of myths: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The War of the Worlds, King Kong, Batman, and Lord of the Rings. These, he argues, have transcended their authors’ intentions and become part of the collective imagination, transformed over time in ways that their creators could scarcely have foreseen.
The Mythic Machinery of Modernity

One of Ball’s most compelling arguments is that myths are not merely stories but self-replicating structures—ideas that find fertile ground in the human mind and adapt themselves to cultural shifts. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for instance, is no longer just a gothic novel about the perils of scientific hubris; it has become a symbol of technological overreach, anxieties about artificial intelligence, and the ethical dilemmas of genetic engineering.

Dracula, meanwhile, began as a very specific late-Victorian nightmare—an invasion fantasy steeped in the era’s racial and sexual anxieties—but has since become a broader cultural archetype, an endlessly adaptable metaphor for everything from capitalism to disease to, in the unfortunate case of certain Twilight-induced mutations, brooding teenage romance.

Ball is at his best when dissecting these shifts. He is not interested in myths as static entities but as processes, stories that act as cultural barometers, absorbing new anxieties and reflecting them back at us in monstrous, often grotesque forms.
Batman, Tolkien, and the Myth of the Self-Made Hero

Among Ball’s more audacious claims is his inclusion of Batman as a modern myth, a choice that will delight some and perplex others. Myth, after all, is traditionally understood as belonging to the distant past, not to a billionaire in a cape. And yet, Ball makes a compelling case. Batman, he argues, is an almost archetypal figure—an orphaned hero on a quest, a man who, despite having no superpowers, bends the world to his will through sheer determination. He is a perfect distillation of the American myth of self-reliance, an urban knight-errant whose war on crime is less about justice than about a deeply ingrained cultural belief that individual effort can overcome systemic decay.

It is an argument that, one suspects, would have amused Plato but deeply unsettled Nietzsche.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, meanwhile, is treated as the great anti-modern myth—an epic that, in Ball’s view, reflects a longing for a world governed by nobility, tradition, and clearly defined morality. That it has found new life in the 21st century, with its endless cinematic adaptations and cultural relevance, suggests that we are perhaps not as enamored with modernity as we like to think.
Where Ball Overreaches

For all its intellectual ambition, The Modern Myths occasionally succumbs to a problem common in works of grand theory: an impulse to fit the evidence to the argument rather than the other way around.

Ball is unquestionably correct that certain modern stories behave like myths—replicating, evolving, and embedding themselves into culture in ways their creators never anticipated. But in his eagerness to classify certain stories as myths, he largely ignores the ones that have failed to achieve that status. Why, for instance, has Frankenstein endured while other 19th-century tales of science gone wrong have been forgotten? What separates a myth from a mere popular story?

At times, Ball treats mythmaking as an inevitable process, when in fact it is highly selective. Not all stories achieve mythic status, and even those that do often require the scaffolding of time, reinterpretation, and relentless retelling. If myths truly are an organic product of culture, then their creation is less about the stories themselves and more about the forces that shape them.
Final Verdict: A Thoughtful, If Occasionally Overzealous, Inquiry into the Stories That Shape Us

Despite these quibbles, The Modern Myths is a fascinating and deeply engaging book. Ball writes with clarity and wit, his prose refreshingly free of the kind of academic jargon that so often mires discussions of myth in impenetrable theory. His insights are sharp, his examples well chosen, and his central thesis—that myths are not relics of the past but active, evolving forces—is difficult to refute.

One closes the book with a renewed appreciation for the stories that have shaped our culture—not as static artifacts, but as living things, mutating to fit our fears, desires, and uncertainties.
Final Thought: Myths Are What We Make of Them

Ultimately, Ball reminds us that myths, ancient or modern, are not merely inherited; they are created anew with each generation. They are, at their core, reflections of us—of what we fear, what we long for, and what we cannot quite understand.

Which means, of course, that the next great myth is already being written.

One only wonders whether, a century from now, cultural historians will be dissecting Star Wars and The Avengers with the same solemnity that we now apply to Homer.

Given our present trajectory, one suspects they will.

How’s that? A rich, comprehensive review that respects Ball’s achievement while maintaining the intellectual depth, humor, and historical weight that George Will might bring to such a work! Let me know if you’d like any refinements.

[M.H. Thaung]

I thank the publishers for a free copy of this book. This is my honest review.

This was a very readable exploration of literature from the 19th and 20th century which the author argues contain elements of/give rise to myth. Although I have no background in modern literature (my main interest is classical mythology), I found the analyses and discussions easy to follow and thought-provoking.

What I didn't manage to keep a grasp on was where the author was heading with each chapter, ie where the evidence fitted into his big picture. Statements such as: "Myths can arise from modern stories" or "Myths aren't dead" (these aren't quotes!) feel vague as a framework, but that was all I could keep in mind when I wondered where the book was going. Since my expectation was of an academic book, I had thought there would be more overt argument. Each work discussed was certainly of interest, but the chapters felt self-contained rather than eg building to a final conclusion. Now, this may be totally on me because of my lack of background in the field. But I wouldn't have minded a more explicit (and repeated) roadmap, so to say.

I think this book would appeal to anyone interested in stories and cultural phenomena.

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enormously entertaining yet erudite analysis of how certain stories function as modern myths. The book examines seven seminal works: Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and the Batman comic books. As a bonus, the book also examines the zombie myth, which is rich in meaning and enormously popular across many forms of media.

Of those seven works, the only one I haven’t consumed in its original source is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, but that story is so much a part of our culture that I’m perfectly familiar with it and was able to appreciate Ball’s analysis. In fact, I recently read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and instantly recognized its connection with Robinson Crusoe. I assume that universal familiarity holds true for all seven myths Ball chose to explore. They’re instantly recognizable as stories that have been told and retold countless times in many types of media. These works are among the basic modern myths of our culture.

Modern myths, according to Ball, typically share the same evolutionary arc. They begin with a source text that is often offbeat, scrappy, or half-formed. The source text is then pulled apart, sifted, and bowdlerized for the mass market. Secondary texts appear that supply the basis for further elaboration, simplification, and icon-generation. There ultimately comes a period when critics reevaluate the source material. Finally, comes synthesis and diversification of the myth. In this last phase, freer adaptations mine particular aspects of the myth and play them against each other. The subject has long outgrown its origins and may have morphed into something else entirely.

Ball traces the divergence of the mythic and realist modes of story-making in the literature to the early nineteenth century. Gothic fiction was the prototype for these voyages into the fantastical. New media and modes of discourse offered new forms of enchantment. Books written in the mythic mode have often been marginalized, mocked, or ignored by critics, despite achieving mass appeal.

Although the seven seminal texts seem like a masculine bunch (despite Mary Shelley's contribution), no fear, this isn't a chauvinistic summary. Perhaps Ball should have included one or two stories with female protagonists, such as The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, or, to use a more modern example, The Hunger Games. Indeed, Ball anticipates that the future of modern myth will be predominantly female. He cites the works of Ursula Le Guin, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, Carmen Maria Machado, Daisy Johnson, Naomi Alderman, Samanta Schweblin, and others, as works written in the mythic mode. Missing from that prestigious list of female authors is J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series continues to inspire mythic re-interpretation, but whose legacy seems forever tarnished by her inexplicable transphobia.

The book is obviously a labor of love from Ball, a popular science writer. It's a tremendously enjoyable book that impresses with its detailed analysis and historical contextualizations of the selected modern myths. The book is worth a read for its thorough examination of the Frankenstein myth alone. Literary criticism should always be this fun and approachable, and it should never fear dipping its toes into the muck of genre fiction.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Porque é que personagens literárias como Frankenstein ou Batman nos são tão significativas? Philip Ball argumenta nestes ensaios que estes personagens ultrapassaram os limites das suas raízes, encapsulando mitos que traduzem as nossas ânsias e angústias perante a modernidade. Representam a mitologia da nossa era, com a lente da literatura fantástica a permitir destilar as questões complexas do confronto entre indivíduo, sociedade e tecnologia de formas que a cultura mais erudita não consegue.

A ligação de Frankenstein com encarnação mítica dos medos trazidos pela ciência e tecnologia é a relação mais óbvia neste livro. A visão de Mary Shelley perdura, embora distante da sua origem, e personifica o temor e questionamento com as possibilidades trazidas pelo progresso tecnológico. Drácula mexe, e remexe, com a sexualidade e as repressões, onde o sobrenatural é metáfora para os medos e angústias de cariz sexual. Já Jekyll e Hyde simboliza a dualidade entre o nosso mundo interior caótico, as nossas pulsões íntimas violentas e publicamente indescritíveis, com as normas sociais e morais. O livro toca na Guerra dos Mundos como forma de desmontar o sentimento de superioridade humana, relativizando eventuais epocalismos e descentrando a humanidade das narrativas de poder, sublinhando a aleatoriedade da nossa existência num cosmos indiferente. Robinson Crusoe mitifica o indíviduo, a capacidade de cada um de ir mais longe e superar obstáculos. Sherlock Holmes personifica a aridez da lógica absoluta, e Batman a visão de justiça perante a decadência, embora uma justiça dúbia vinda de um espírito pouco asisado.

Um dos pontos interessantes onde Ball toca é na imperfeição destas personagens, e como isso abre espaço à sua mitificação. A análise da sua génese é profunda, em erudita crítica literária que se complementa com as visões e revisões posteriores destas persnagens na cultura popular em todas as suas modalidades. As imperfeições literárias e incoerências dos textos originais, argumenta, tornaram estas personagens permeáveis a interpretações latas, permitindo encarnar medos, receios, anseios e com isso enraizar-se na consciência coletiva. Na verdade, não necessitamos de conhecer ao pormenor qualquer uma destas personagens para nos vir à mente os mitos que representam, tal é o seu poder cultural. Tal não seria possível com um maior refinamento estilístico ou complexidade literária, afirma o ensaísta.

Ao longo dos ensaios, Ball mostra como estas figuras se tornaram arquétipos, personificações de conceitos e ideias dispersos, sensações despertadas pelo nosso confronto com a evolução da modernidade. Foca-se nisso o seu argumento de mitificação, as suas iconografias e abertura conceptual tornam-se metáforas que nos ajudam a compreender os medos trazidos pelo confronto com os tempos modernos, desde o espaço interior da sexualidade e pulsões ao espaço exterior do nosso lugar no universo.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Modern Myths, by Philip Ball, is an important book. Not only is it superbly written, it’s important because it helps to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves. We try to understand our universe through stories. Many stories that are treated as lesser literature because of their speculative nature and their obviously amateurish execution become the tropes by which we measure our world. Some examples might help.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and the figure of Batman are all example of modern myths. We know the basics of the stories even if we’ve never read them and we use them to explain life. Frankenstein, for example, is invoked for our struggle with technology, science and religion debates, and ethical issues about what we should do, among other things. In other words, we use it to make sense of life.

Ball also speculates about current and future myths. As I discuss elsewhere Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, one of those current myths is reflected in the zombie craze. Like other speculative characters, zombies explain a complex world where things often seem to be out of control. Imagine a book that does this for several favorite characters and monsters and you’ll get an idea of this wonderful book. Although published by a university press, it is very well written and it will make you think.

[Loren Picard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ball discusses modern myths such as Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman. The last not coming from a book. The author best sums up his own book early on, stating "As classical myths did for the cultures that conceived them, modern myths help help us to frame and come to terms with the conditions of our existence." I like how the author makes the case that myths cannot be created by an author. He asserts that authors create stories and society creates the myth(s). Horror versus terror is a key differentiator of myths versus other stories. Of the seven myths discussed, with discussions of other parallel myths, I came to the conclusion that four of them are basically the same myth, but reconceived to address different projections of society's angst.

[SierraL · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Hard to read this book. I wanted to like it, and was excited to read it going in, but it seems like Ball is inconsistent in his definition of a myth and his interpretations of the works he talks about. Some parts make it seem like you’re going to have a fun read, and then incorrect or-frankly, odd opinions will crop up. There’s a section in the Jekyll and Hyde chapter of the book in which Ball directly quotes Stevenson saying that Hyde is NOT representing lust or any sort of repressed hatred of women on jekylls part or anything, and Ball immediately goes in a tangent saying that Stevenson is WRONG about the book HE WROTE, and worse yet says that Stevenson is being TOO BOLD by thinking he can decide what Hyde represents. THE AUTHOR of the work he’s talking about is apparently NOT ALLOWED to tell people what the book he wrote about is about, or what the characters represent. What?

[Henry Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

We tend to associate myths with the far past. The doings of Zeus, or Achilles, or Gilgamesh, or Thor. Ball argues that myths are continuously created, and offers some modern examples of tales that started in popular culture but which have transcended their often humble or tawdry beginnings to become mythic tropes. Frankenstein. Dracula. Batman. Jekyll and Hyde. The key to myths is that the originals are often so badly done that they offer scope for others to adopt the tales and run with them. Great literature, it seems, rarely works as myth. I enjoyed this book enormously but found I didn’t agree with all of it. This is the mark of a good book – it leaves plenty of space left for debate and discussion. It made me think.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book. The author has an engaging, accessible style which draws the reader in effortlessly. Any fan of horror books and movies will enjoy the analysis this author brings to the subject matter, and how modern myths are constructed from the raw materials engendered from these source materials. But horror alone is not the only source the author draws from. Other sources from Robinson Crusoe to the Batman are also examined, with surprising and interesting results. Nearly a five star book, though I thought the final chapter, The Mythic Mode, was a bit redundant. Still, I certainly recommend this book without hesitation.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly readable and highly interesting book about modern myths, which are defined as stories that speak to the culture and express anxieties and hopes. Ball looks at Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Jekyll/Hyde, Dracula, War of the Worlds, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman.

There are plenty of errors of detail in this book. (Vincent Price never played Dracula, for instance, nor was Lionel Barrymore the vampire in "Mark of the Vampire.") However, one reads "The Modern Myths" for the big picture and the argument that the literature of the fantastic speaks to a basic need in our culture.

Very glad I read this one.

[Jerry James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining but I think Ball’s definition, or more accurately, his reduction of myth is too small and specific. Certainly the literary tales and characters he focuses on have mythic air about them, but myth is too big for this. Myth is a dive into human psychology and archetype to produce a meaningful vehicle to portray that and communicate it.

A genre of tales is more appropriately close to what myth is than any one character or folktale.

[Harry Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an extremely enjoyable dip into literary criticism. Ball takes ahold of a focused definition of a 'myth' (not mapping onto common language but also not idiosyncratic): a story which is somewhat ambiguous or ill defined often even in its first incarnation and so is extremely mutable, with numerous retellings, and serves as the projection of cultural themes (sometimes contradictory). Following along with each example of popular literature, and the chain of cultural effects, this perspective becomes ever more engaging (although not without some head scratching, I'm still trying to give Ball the benefit of the doubt in the claim that Batman is a myth whereas Superman is not). Anyone who enjoys reading the occasional nonfiction about the fantastic fiction they love will enjoy this one.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good if occasionally obvious reading of pop culture.

[Kevin Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man went full cultural theory on Batman

[Anna Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a surprise to read this highly researched book from Philip Ball. It is a delight to read and was an act of love for him to write.

[Lucius · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely fascinating.

[Carol Tilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Beau · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine but a bit dry in parts didn’t add anything new. If anything great research material for thesis etc

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Disclaimer: I got this book via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program] Philip Ball is a science writer, who was an editor at Nature for more than 20 years. This time he wrote a book a bit far from his usual themes: The Modern Myths tells us about how even in modern times a new myth may be born, different from the Greek classics ones because people see the world in a different way. He chooses seven plus one seminal works. Robinson Crusoe, the self-made man; Frankenstein, the reanimator; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the beast within us; Dracula, the blood as life generator; The War of the Words, aliens and destructions; Sherlock Holmes, antihuman logic; Batman, beyond the law; and zombies' stories, which for him have potential to become a myth but aren't yet.
Ball advocates that «Myths are not made in times of conflict and revolution. They come from the stress and unease that precedes or follows a seismic shock, not from the shock itself» and that they are born because they feed a need. They may refer to science, but they addresses something which is not rational. The works which start the myth are not well crafted at all, and this allow other people to bowdlerize them first, then to reevaluate them and finally to create parodies and spoofs which are telltale signs of a full-winged myth.
The book is fully researched, maybe even too much: I had some problems in following the history of all the reincarnations of the various myths. But I think that this book helps the reader to understand why some themes are ubiquitous.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review is here

[Kathleen McCart]

Rec by me May 2023