“Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus”, the book by 20-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is frequently called the world’s first science fiction novel.
In Shelley’s tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses. The gentle, intellectually gifted creature is enormous and physically hideous. Cruelly rejected by its creator, it wanders, seeking companionship and becoming increasingly brutal as it fails to find a mate.
Mary Shelley created the story on a rainy afternoon in 1816 in Geneva, where she was staying with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, their friend Lord Byron and Lord Byron's physician, John Polidori.
The group, trapped indoors by the inclement weather, passed the time telling and writing ghost stories. The ideas for both “Frankenstein”, and Polidori's “The Vampyre”, which was published in 1819, were both born that day.
Although serving as the basis for the Western horror story and the inspiration for numerous movies in the 20th century, the book “Frankenstein” is much more than pop fiction. The story explores philosophical themes and challenges Romantic ideals about the beauty and goodness of nature.