洛桑日内瓦湖上空的暴风雨，瑞典 Stormy sky over Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland (© Suradech Singhanat/Shutterstock)

洛桑日内瓦湖上空的暴风雨，瑞典 Stormy sky over Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland (© Suradech Singhanat/Shutterstock)

一个黑暗的暴风雨之夜 On a dark and stormy night...

弗兰肯斯坦星期五

如果看到日内瓦湖上空的风暴云聚集，你会陷入一种阴暗而沉闷的情绪，那么当玛丽·雪莱构思这个将成为她开创性作品的故事时，你会对她的心境有一个了解。虽然雪莱写了几部历史小说和旅游书籍，但正是这个关于一个怪诞生物的可怕故事给她留下了遗产。

今天，也是十月的最后一个星期五，是《弗兰肯斯坦星期五》，这是对雪莱1818年小说的一次庆祝，这部小说讲述了一位医生救死扶伤的故事，许多人认为这是第一部科幻小说。雪莱在法国-瑞士边境阿尔卑斯山北部的日内瓦湖为“弗兰肯斯坦”（又名“现代普罗米修斯”）构思了概念。1816年，她在这里度过了一个异常寒冷和潮湿的夏天，她的未来丈夫珀西·比什·雪莱和拜伦勋爵都是诗人。这群人被关在室内，互相挑战，想出鬼故事。玛丽很快写了一篇短篇小说，后来成为了《弗兰肯斯坦》，在一个漆黑、暴风雨的夜晚，日内瓦湖的阴暗和寒冷在很大程度上激发了她的灵感。

Frankenstein Friday

If the sight of storm clouds gathering over Lake Geneva puts you in a dark and ponderous mood, then you have an idea of Mary Shelley's frame of mind when she conceived the story that would become her seminal work. While Shelley wrote several historical novels and travel books, it was this macabre story of a grotesque creature that made her legacy.

Today and every final Friday of October is Frankenstein Friday, a celebration of Shelley's 1818 novel about a doctor who reanimates the dead—a tale of terror that many also think of as the first science fiction novel.  Shelley concocted the concept for 'Frankenstein' (aka 'The Modern Prometheus') here at Lake Geneva in the northern Alps on the French-Swiss border. She spent an unusually cold and wet summer here in 1816 with her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, both poets. Confined indoors, the group challenged one another to come up with ghost stories. Mary quickly wrote the short story that would become 'Frankenstein,' inspired in no small part by the gloom and chill of Lake Geneva on one dark and stormy night.