This Day in History: 1818-01-01

Frankenstein published on this day in 1818 in London. The first science fiction novel, written on a dare by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Frankenstein is the classic cautionary tale of science gone horribly wrong. Scientist Victor Frankenstein, intrigued by the idea of animating dead tissue with electricity, stitches a few body parts together and creates a monster. At one point in the novel, the doctor says that while he had “a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy, it was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power.”