Mary ShelleyFrankensteinor The Modern PrometheusMary Shelley was the daughter of the radical feminist MaryWollstencraft and the mistress - later the wife - of the poet Percy ByssheShelley. In 1816, she and her half-sister, Claire Claremont, mistress of bothShelley and Byron, followed Shelley into exile from his native land, where hisfrank espousal of a philosophy of ‘free love’ and his outspoken atheism hadbeen little relished. They spent the summer with Lord Byron (also on the runfrom scandal in England) who had taken the Villa Diodati on the shores of LakeGeneva. The company may even have been joined by the shade of Milton who hadonce occupied the house. But the current of creative genius that had producedthe divine spark in Milton had become, in the popular imagination, somethingdemonic in these two arch-romantic poets. On June 15, as the lightning flickered across the lake, Marylistened to the conversation of Byron, Shelley and Dr. Polidori, Byron’s youngamanuensis. They were discussing galvanism (the medical use of electriccurrent) and the possibility of provoking the very spark of life by its means.The subject was of particular interest to Shelley who had experimented withelectrical instruments at Oxford. At the same time the company were deeplyengrossed in German horror stories, and the following day they each agreed totry their hand at writing a ghost story. The published outcome was Polidori’sThe Vampyre, adapted from Byron’s effort, which had in turn been inspired by anhysterical fantasy from Shelley - and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Inspiration had been slow in coming, but when it did hernightmarish creation broke upon her drowsing consciousness fully-formed. She“saw the pale student of unhallowed arts” turning in horror from “his odioushandiwork”, the vile assemblage of human remains which he had animated with thebreath of life. And in working out this ghastly fantasy into a full narrativeher inspiration did not desert her. She was hardly nineteen. Though she lived anotherthirty-five years, she never again approached the visionary grandeur ofconception achieved in this, her first literary effort. All her youthful life’sexperience went into it. Above all, it was about Shelley himself, who is boththe idealistic creative spirit and the hounded outcast, both Dr. Frankensteinand his monster. In a sense, the popular misconception that gives the nameFrankenstein to the monster himself is an appropriate one. Frankenstein’screation haunts him like his own evil genius, his own shadow made flesh. For itis his refusal to take responsibility for the unprepossessing fruit of hisactions that turns it into an avenging angel, destroying all the humanconnections that make life meaningful, as it pursues him to the grave. Frankenstein is a meditation upon the grounds of evilinspired by the anarchist philosophy of Mary’s father, William Godwin. It isalso a daring development of Milton’s vision of the fallen angel in ParadiseLost and a critique of the idea of Divine creation itself. But finally, it mustbe recognized as quite a new thing for its time: it is the first work ofscience fiction in English. And as science fiction, it is about the limitationsof goodwill without wisdom. It is a dire warning against technological hubris,against the temptation to assume that benevolent intentions are sufficient toprocure beneficent results. Its timely message is that there are matters withwhich we tamper at out peril. As such, the novel remains the most powerfulPromethean fable of modern times. Notes by Duncan Steen About the Readers DANIEL PHILPOTT trained at LAMDA and after success in theprestigious Carlton-Hobbs Award for Radio Drama recorded for BBC Radio 4 andother broadcast work. His theater work includes productions on the London fringe.A graduate of Manchester University JONATHAN OLIVER hasappeared in theater throughout the UK in works ranging from JuliusCaesar (for the English Shakespeare Company) to Bulgakov’s Master andMargarita. Widely experienced in television, film and radio, he has, for adecade, also recorded audiobooks for the Royal National Institute for theBlind. CHRIS LARKIN trained at LAMDA. Among his theater appearanceshave been Taste of Honey (Theatr Clwyd), and The Lucky Chance (DerbyPlayhouse). His television and film credits include Frank Stubbs Promotes,Grimsby Last Stop and Angels and Insects.