This week: One cold, dark summer… Edited by: Arakun the Twisted Raccoon  
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Quote for the week:
"I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."
~From the Introduction to the 1831 version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" |
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One of the most famous works of fiction ever written came about due to a volcanic eruption and a writing competition between friends.
In 1815, a massive eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora sent giant clouds of volcanic ash into the air. The ash blocked the warm rays of the sun, plunging the world into a volcanic winter. Record cold temperatures continued through 1816, which is known as "The Year Without a Summer."
In May of 1816, a group of friends gathered at a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, hoping for a vacation from the terrible weather. The group included Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his lover and future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
The weather continued to be cold, rainy, and foggy, forcing the group to stay indoors throughout most of the holiday. They passed the time by talking late into the night and reading ghost stories. One night, Byron proposed a competition in which they would each write a ghost story.
Mary, who was only 18 years old at the time, had some trouble thinking of a story at first. Then one night, the group's discussion turned to the nature of life and whether a corpse could be reanimated by galvanism, or the generation of an electric current by chemical action.
That night, Mary was unable to sleep as her story took shape in her mind. She described a "waking dream" in which she imagined a scientist gazing with horror and awe upon the creature that resulted from his experiments. The next day, she began work on what she intended to be a short story, but she later expanded it into her first novel, "Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus."
The story, first published in 1818, is one of the most famous horror novels of all time, and is also said to be the first science fiction novel. It has been listed as one of the world's 100 most influential novels and has inspired many plays, films, and TV shows.
While many people associate the name Frankenstein with the creature, it is actually the name of the scientist, Victor Frankenstein. In the book, Frankenstein is so horrified by his creation that he does not give it a name. It is referred to by words such as "the monster" or "the wretch." The creature's appearance may have been inspired by a beggar Mary met in Geneva whom she described in her diary as "sickly, gaunt, abysmally tall and lacking any human emotion, morality, or sensibilities"
Movie adaptations often show Dr. Frankenstein cobbling his creature together from body parts of the recently dead and animating it by means of electricity. In the book, the scientist discovers a previously unknown principle of life that allows him to animate non-living matter, but the actual process is left ambiguous.
While "Frankenstein" is the most famous work to come out of the friendly writing competition, it is not the only one. John Polidori's story, "The Vampyre" is said to be the origin of the genre of vampire fiction. It tells the story of a vampire named Lord Ruthven, whom Polidori may have based on Byron himself. Lord Byron's poem "The Darkness" is inspired by the cold, inhospitable weather of that summer which many people at the time feared might signal the end of the world. Mary's husband, Percy Shelley, apparently did not come up with a story he thought good enough to save, because I was unable to find any mention of one. He did, however, provide encouragement and editorial advice for Mary as she finished her novel.
If you find yourself unable to think of a story idea, follow Mary Shelley's example and take inspiration from the world around you. Hopefully, we will never live through another year without a summer, but the conditions you see around you may inspire your own great novel someday.
Something to try: Since Halloween is coming, it might be a good time to get together with writer friends and see who can come up with the best ghost story. Or maybe try and write one together.
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Horror/Scary: October 12, 2022 Issue [#11606]
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