The Night That Created a Monster: How a Stormy Evening in 1816 Gave Birth to Frankenstein

The True Story Behind the World’s First Science Fiction Novel
A group of brilliant but troubled writers met in a villa near Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. The weather was unnaturally cold—later called "The Year Without a Summer" due to a volcanic eruption—and trapped indoors, they told ghost stories by candlelight. What began as a simple challenge—Who can write the scariest tale?—ended up producing one of the most enduring horror stories of all time: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, penned by an 18-year-old Mary Shelley.
But Frankenstein wasn’t just a ghost story. It was the first true science fiction novel, a meditation on creation, ambition, and the monstrous consequences of playing God. This is the tale of how a stormy night, a waking nightmare, and an adolescent literary genius changed horror forever.

Chapter 1: The Haunted Summer of 1816
The "Year Without a Summer"
Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in April 1815, the largest volcanic eruption ever recorded. Ash blocked the sun, causing global temperatures to plummet. Crops failed. The hunger spread. In addition, the weather in Switzerland, where Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and his physician John Polidori were staying, was so bad that they had to stay inside for days. The Challenge That Changed Literature
To pass the time, Byron proposed a contest: Each of us must write a ghost story. The others struggled—Byron abandoned his fragment, Polidori later turned his into The Vampyre, the first modern vampire tale—but Mary was stuck. She then had a vision during a sleepless night. "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."
This nightmare became Frankenstein.
Chapter 2: The Birth of a Monster (and a Genre)
Science, Not Supernatural
Unlike traditional Gothic tales of haunted castles and vengeful spirits, Shelley’s story was rooted in science. To reanimate dead flesh, Victor Frankenstein employs electricity, chemistry, and anatomy, not magic. This was groundbreaking. Galvani’s Frogs: Experiments with electricity making dead muscles twitch fascinated Shelley.
Erasmus Darwin’s Theories: Speculation about spontaneous generation may have inspired her.
Grave Robbing: Real-life "resurrection men" stole corpses for dissection, blurring ethics.
Shelley didn’t just write horror—she invented science fiction by asking, What if science went too far?
Who is the real monster? The creature depicted by Shelley was not idly. He was articulate, lonely, and vengeful—a mirror of Victor’s own hubris. The novel’s true horror isn’t the monster, but the creator’s abandonment of his creation.
"I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel." — The Creature
A Novel Shaped by Tragedy:

Chapter 3 Mary’s Personal Ghosts
Shelley’s life was marked by loss:
Days after she was born, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft passed away. Her infant son, Percy, was her first child. Percy’s wife, Harriet, drowned herself after he left her for Mary.
These tragedies seeped into Frankenstein—a story about failed parenthood, abandonment, and the weight of creation.
The Misunderstood Original Text The 1818 edition (written at 18) is darker and more philosophical than the revised 1831 version, where Shelley softened Victor’s recklessness. Some scholars argue the first draft is the true radical vision.
Chapter 4: Frankenstein’s Undying Legacy
From Stage to Screen
1910: The monster was depicted as a tragic figure in the first film, which was lost for decades. 1931: Universal’s iconic Boris Karloff version cemented the "shambling brute" image—far from Shelley’s articulate creature.
Modern Takes: Penny Dreadful, The Frankenstein Chronicles, and Poor Things keep reimagining her themes.
The Birth of Sci-Fi
Without Frankenstein, we might not have:
Dr. Mr. and Dr. Jekyll Hyde (scientific duality)
Blade Runner ("What does it mean to be human?")
Ex Machina (AI as Shelley’s Creature 2.0)
Even Jurassic Park is Frankenstein with dinosaurs.