书名：Frankenstein 弗兰肯斯坦/科学怪人

难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1040L

作者：Mary Shelley

出版社名称：Alma Classics

出版时间：2012

语种：英文

ISBN：9781847493507

商品尺寸：19.8 x 1.8 x 13.2 cm

包装：平装

页数：280（以实物为准）

Frankenstein《弗兰肯斯坦》（科学怪人）是英国知名女作家玛丽·雪莱在1818年创作的小说，被认为是世界第1部真正意义上的科幻小说。至今已被翻译成100多种语言，并多次被改编成电影和戏剧。小说在传统哥特式小说的基础上融合了浪漫主义元素和现实主义元素，采用书信体和记叙体相穿插的形式，创作手法特别。小说中的怪物形象在西方家喻户晓，它还为英语添加了一个新的单词“Frankenstein”（意为“作法自毙的人”）。 Since it was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley's seminal novel has generated countless print, stage and screen adaptations, but none has ever matched the power and philosophical resonance of the original. Composed as part of a challenge with Byron and Shelley to conjure up the most terrifying ghost story, Frankenstein narrates the chilling tale of a being created by a bright young scientist and the catastrophic consequences that ensue. Considered by many to be the first science-fiction novel, the tragic tale of Victor Frankenstein and the tortured creation he rejects is a classic fable about the pursuit of knowledge, the nature of beauty and the monstrosity inherent to man.

Frankenstein《弗兰肯斯坦》讲述的是年轻的科学家弗兰肯斯坦为追求和利用当时的生物学知识，从停尸房等处取得不同人体的器官和组织，拼合成一个人体，并利用雷电使这个人体拥有了生命。巨人虽然天性善良，向往美好，渴望感情，但是，由于面貌丑陋，被社会视为怪物，当作巨大的威胁，处处碰壁。他要求弗兰肯斯坦为自己制造一个配偶，答应事成后与其双双远离人间。弗刚开始应允了怪物，但在接近成功之时，担心怪物种族从此危害社会，于是毁去了女性怪物。苦苦企盼的怪物疯狂报复，杀死弗的未婚妻等几个亲人。弗发誓毁掉自己的作品，追踪怪物一直到北极地带，受尽折磨后病逝，而怪物亦自焚而死。 The story is well known: Driven by ambition and an insatiable thirst for scientific knowledge, Victor Frankenstein—the “Modern Prometheus” of the original subtitle—fashions what he believes to be the ideal man from a grotesque collection of spare parts, breathing life into it through a series of ghastly experiments. When the monstrous results of his hubris become clear, the scientist and his creation are pitted against each other in a mortal pursuit that takes them to the ends of the earth.

玛丽·雪莱，英国小说家，浪漫主义诗人波西·比希·雪莱（Percy Bysshe Shelley）的第二任妻子。她的是原名玛丽·戈德温（Mary Godwin），父亲是英国哲学家、小说家威廉·戈德温（William Godwin），母亲是知名的女权主义者玛莉·渥斯顿克雷福特（Mary Wollstonecraft）。因其1818年创作了文学史上首部科幻小说《弗兰肯斯坦》（或译《科学怪人》），而被誉为科幻小说之母。 Born in London,Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-51) was the daughter of William Godwin, a noted social theorist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the leading literary women of the day. Her mother died soon after her birth, and Mary was raised first under the care of servants, then by a stepmother, and finally in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of her father’s circle. In May 1814, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley and, in July of the year, moved with him to the Continent. Two years later, after the death of Shelley’s wife, the poet and Mary were able to wed. It was in Switzerland in 1816, as a result of a story-writing competition among the Shelleys and Lord Byron, that Mary began Frankenstein, her first and most famous novel. Published in 1818, it was followed by such works as Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), and Falkner (1837). In 1822, after the death of her husband, she devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and the securing of his right to the Shelley family title.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking. I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There–for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators–there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.