THERE IS little doubt that freakish and unnaturally assembled storms are a taste of what the future holds under an economic system that has "interfered with the tranquility of domestic affections" and galvanized the forces of nature into a fury of clashing dislocations as we pump ever-more heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere and industrial filth into our lungs.

The riptides of climate change are beginning to tear at the fabric of our biosphere as the earth's climate system lurches, in ungainly and lumbering jerks, from the relatively dormant and benign stability of the last 10,000 years, toward a more volatile, violent and less hospitable new climatic state, previously unknown to human civilization.

It's therefore quite apt to allude to Mary Shelley's great work of gothic horror by giving the name "Frankenstorm" to the confluence of Hurricane Sandy and a cold front crossing the Northeastern U.S. Particularly as Shelley herself offered a symbolic criticism of the inner dynamics of capitalism and class society in Frankenstein, captured in the quote above, as the conflicted Victor recounts his tale and the uncontrollable forces he has unleashed as a result of his compulsion to continue with his project, despite the warning signs proliferating around him.