How has Mary Shelleys Frankenstein shocked and fascinated the readers for so many years?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written during a summer holiday in 1816. 1816 was the 'Year without a Summer', and saw the last worldwide famine due to climatic reasons.

Mary Shelley's novel is about what happens when Science begins to do things that only God was supposed to be able to do. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates life - but in fact after 1816 agricultural science was able to control, and mitigate, worldwide famines (which had previously been a regular feature of human life).

Humans are not yet used to how much control we suddenly seem to have over 'Acts of God'. The global plagues and famines which used to be a regular feature of life are now almost history (cholera and smallpox are already historical diseases). We are even able to give people new hearts and allow barren couples to have children through IVF.

Many people worry that Man is not yet wise enough to 'Play God'

• but nobody wants to refuse the antibiotics which will stop them

from dying in their early 40's.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein examines what happens when an ordinary scientist is given the power of life and death. These days every surgeon in an ER has that on a weekly basis.