Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

It was conceived in the Swiss Alps in mid-June 1816 after a conversation about bringing corpses to life provoked a nightmare, and was written over the next eleven months in largely morbid circumstances. Death and the terrors of childbirth--as much as Romanticism, a burgeoning awareness of unconscious drives, and contemporary ideas of atheism, the collapse of the social contract, and the corrupting influence of society on human nature--inform this story of a man (or monster) built by Dr. Victor Frankenstein and brought to life by electricity.

The monster's culpability for various horrific acts, his powerlessness in the face of his complete ostracism from society, and Dr. Frankenstein's lies, abdication of responsibility, and the pain he inflicts on his creation raised chilling questions that made the novel an immediate bestseller.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.

Jugar a ser Dios es cosa fácil, pero tiene, para todos los involucrados, creadores y criaturas por igual, un alto, altísimo precio que entre todos pagamos tarde o temprano. Este libro nos lo hace ver y comprender magistralmente. Una criatura que ha sido engendrada con restos de cadáveres descubre que ha sido cruelmente engañada por su propio creador. Esta traición le será insoportable y provocará la espiral de la violencia con que la novela se encamina, con renovada intensidad, hacia su desolador desenlace. Mary Shelley es el padre y la madre de la ciencia ficción tal y como la concebimos: como un ejercicio de crítica de la realidad, como una visión panorámica de nuestros deseos más íntimos y de nuestros miedos más públicos. Una escritora imprescndible para entender el mundo en que vivimos, el caos que hoy nos lleva entre sus aguas turbulentas.

James Hynes

. . .[T]he novel Frankenstein is quite a read. . . .It's highly Romantic, in the literary sense. . .[there is] a good deal of attractive torment and self-doubt, from both Victor Frankenstein and his creation. . . .If ever a book needed to be placed in context, it's Frankenstein. —The New York Times Book Review

Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797 in London, the daughter of William Godwin--a radical philosopher and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft--a renowned feminist and the author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She eloped to France with Shelley in 1814, although they were not married until 1816, after the suicide of his first wife. She began work on Frankenstein in 1816 in Switzerland, while they were staying with Lord Byron, and it was published in 1818 to immediate acclaim. She died in London in 1851.