The young scientist Victor Frankenstein created his peculiar Creature in an unconventional experiment. Two centuries later, Frankenbook, a collaborative reading experiment, lets readers interact in unusual ways with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein, which explores the moral implications of science and technology. Visitors to this website can scroll through Shelley's original 1818 text with clickable annotations written by experts from a variety of fields and organized under themes such as equity and inclusion, health and medicine, and politics. Under the Media tab, visitors will find further resources, such as a series of animated videos (each under five minutes) that bring select annotations to life. For instance, the first video, "A Bolt of Lightning," illustrates how Shelley was inspired by lectures where scientists did live experiments and explores the novel's parallels to our modern-day relationship with technology. Adventurous readers will not want to miss Modern Monsters, a "choose your own adventure" game where players emulate Frankenstein's experimentation in an effort to defeat monsters like Blood Suckers (disease-spreading mosquitoes) and Body Snatchers (organ traffickers). Readers can create a free account to reply to annotations and submit their own to spark discussion. There is also a Teacher's Guide that helps educators integrate Frankenbook into the classroom and an Essays section with selections from science fiction writers. The project was developed by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, in partnership with The MIT Press and MIT Media Lab, with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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