検索キーワード： "Mary Shelley" 歴史

A Monster Story. A Moral Catastrophe. The Birth of Science Fiction. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at eighteen years old during the strangest summer in recent memory — stranded on the shores of Lake Geneva with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, during a year of unnatural cold and darkness caused by a volcanic eruption halfway around the world. The ghost story competition Byron proposed that summer produced one entry worth remembering. The result was the first science fiction novel ever written — and one of the most influential books in the English language.

Frankenstein is the classic gothic horror novel which has thrilled and engrossed readers/listeners for two centuries. Written by Mary Shelley, it is a story which she intended would ‘curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.’ The tale is a superb blend of science fiction, mystery and thriller. Victor Frankenstein, driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experiments with alchemy and science to build a monster stitched together from dead remains. Once the creature becomes a living breathing articulate entity, it turns on its maker and the novel darkens into tragedy.

Far from its popular image, the story of Frankenstein as told by Mary Shelley is not a tale that finds horror in a hideous "monster", or a "crazed" scientist. The darkness in the narrative is found in the profound loneliness of both Creator and Created, as they seek one another in a tragic cycle of unfulfilled longing and revenge.

This powerful novel, first published in 1818, still surprises and shocks us with the fundamental questions about the moral boundaries of human discovery, and helps us to question what it means to be human.