What Frankenstein means now

It is 200 years since the birth of 'a story to speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror'. Why are we still so interested in the story of Frankenstein?

As far as anyone can tell, today marks the 200^th anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin getting up after a sleepless night and declaring: "I've found it! What will terrify me will terrify others. I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow". She had hit upon the idea that would become Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus, the cautionary tale that has provided a vocabulary for the relationship between science and society ever since.

Appropriately, it has been a dark and stormy (OK, rainy) night on the shores of Lake Geneva, where I and other Frankenstein-botherers have been gathering at the Brocher Foundation, a few miles from the grand villa where Mary was staying with Lord Byron, her future husband Percy and associated hangers-on.