Terrific piece Rafia.

I have read the story many times but your piece makes me want to read it all over again.

It all began from a "waking dream" that Mary Shelley had one early morning at the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva having been stirred by the challenge Byron made to compose a "ghost story",

"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."

Mary was just 18.

The first true science fiction story ever written.

And in my opinion, never bettered.