On a miserable summer trip to Geneva with her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet Lord Byron and a small group of friends, writer Mary Wollstonecraft was asked to participate in a game where the guests would create a ghost story and share it with the group. Everyone told their stories, but Mary's creation surprised them all. She had conceived of the idea that would later become her best known work, a tale of horror and creation, the legendary early science fiction classic: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The story tells the tale of Doctor Victor Frankenstein who develops a method to impart life to dead matter. Attempting to build something beautiful, Frankenstein instead creates a hideous humanoid figure and flees his creation in terror. The Creature, now abandoned, roams the country under cover of darkness and develops a deep-seated resentment towards humanity and his own creator. The two beings - the scientist and the result of his experiment - find their destinies intertwined as each attempts to destroy the other. A Gothic tale of creation and the very meaning of being alive, Frankenstein is among the most revered early science fiction works and, over the years, the story has been adapted into dozens of stage, screen and television productions

Mode of access: World Wide Web