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The face lives, and then, as the first convulsive breaths stir its limbs, the body too. Victor Frankenstein, a mortal, has, for the first time, stolen the spark of life from God, the divine. And now his creature moves before him, an assemblage of disparate human parts, imperfect, wretched, desperate for acceptance, yet eventually satanic.</p><h3>In the beginning</h3><p>“I too can create desolation,” it scowls later as its fists grip tighter round the neck of Victor’s brother. The words are aimed at Victor, though: his creator, and his rejecter too. The message is simple: beware the man who rebels against the human condition. Beware the creator-turned-tyrant who dares play with fire. Destructive and creative, dark and bright, violent and benevolent, this is Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s menacing tale of creation conceived during the dark Swiss summer of 1816.</p><p>That year, in June, Mary was a guest of Lord Byron’s at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. With her was her future husband, Percy Shelley, her stepsister Claire, and a young doctor named John Polidori. One night, as storms gathered outside, Byron recounted a collection of old German ghost stories to his guests. He had a way with words. The tales of murderous spectres and heads ripped from decaying corpses only to be brought back to life sent Percy shrieking round the room. He ran upstairs disturbed, shaken and dripping wax from his candle as he went.</p><p class="quote">"She knew of Luigi Galvani...who made the legs of dead frogs twitch when prodded with an electrically charged scalpel"</p><h3>The catalyst</h3><p>Downstairs Mary’s mind ran wild with thoughts of conjuring the deceased from their graves. She knew of Luigi Galvani, the Italian physician who made the legs of dead frogs twitch when prodded with an electrically charged scalpel, and the year before she had visited the house of Andrew Crosse (‘the thunder and lightning man’), a renegade amateur scientist who had transformed the ballroom of his princely home into a giant laboratory of conductors, crystals, jars, voltaic piles and over two kilometres of insulated wires swinging from the trees outside.</p><p>Crosse was similarly enthralled with the prospect of creation, but he was wrongly chastised when an experiment he reported - in which insects seemed to appear before him as if from nowhere - was exaggerated by the God-fearing people of the day. In their eyes he had claimed to create life. It was unacceptable, blasphemous even. How dare any man disrupt the divinely established order of life. And how dare any man - or, God forbid, woman - write about such things.</p><p>Mary did just that of course. Back at the house on the lake, as nature attuned itself to the whispered conversations within, as the air outside fizzed and crackled with heat and noise, she couldn’t sleep - not unusual given the tormented life she led. Her mother died two weeks after she was born, she had an endlessly fraught relationship with her father, lost three children, and, in 1822, her husband set sail with a friend for Italy but the ship never made it.</p><p class="quote">“I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out...”</p><h3>A vivid imagination</h3><p>So she lay awake, wondering if, held before a fire and rubbed vigorously, her recently deceased daughter might be brought back to life. And then the story of Frankenstein emerged, the story of a rebel who, like her, wondered if man might remake this cruel and imperfect world for himself: “My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes but acute mental vision - 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 uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous creator of the world.”</p><p>Only 18-years-old, Mary thus began her romantic quest to explore and challenge the origins of man. The book was originally called The Modern Prometheus, after the Greek titan who stole fire - and creation - from Zeus. Like Victor, Prometheus was punished for his sins, a lonely iconoclast operating on the fringes of society. Mary Shelley was much the same: brave, provocative and stubborn in her refusal to accept things as they were.</p><div class="bio"> <img alt="Fergal Smith" src="/web/20120620062017im_/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/content/shared/img/biographies/BIO_fergal_smith.jpg"/> <div class="details"> <div class="head"> <h4>Fergal Smith</h4> </div> <dl> <dt>Speciality</dt> <dd><p>Surfing</p><p/></dd> <dt>Career highlight to date</dt> <dd><p> The first movie we made in West Oz - 'Revolution' - was the first big highlight that stands out.  </p><p/></dd> </dl> <p class="link"><a href="/web/20120620062017/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/people/fergal-smith.html">View complete profile</a></p> </div> </div><div class="gallery gallery-inline"> <div class="head"> <h4>Events</h4> </div> <ul> <li> <a href="/web/20120620062017/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/events/relentless-big-air-stuttgart-2011.html"> <img src="/web/20120620062017im_/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/content/shared/img/image_links/ILN_bigair.jpg" alt="Relentless BIGAIR Stuttgart - snowboard tournament"/> <span>Relentless Energy Drink BIGAIR Stuttgart 2011</span> </a> </li> <li class="wide"> <a href="/web/20120620062017/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/features/ash-headline-the-fly-presents-energy-sessions-the-garage-london-december-2011.html"> <img src="/web/20120620062017im_/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/content/shared/img/image_links/ILW_ash.jpg" alt="Ash play The Fly Magazine present Energy Sessions sponsored by Relentless Energy Drink"/> <span>Ash headline The Fly Magazine present Energy Sessions</span> </a> </li> <li class="wide"> <a href="kerrang-tour-2012-relentless-energy-drink-new-found-glory-sum-41.html"> <img src="/web/20120620062017im_/http://www.relentlessenergy.com/content/shared/img/image_links/ILW_kerrang.jpg" alt="New Found Glory and Sum 41 headline The Kerrang! 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