The Volcanic Summer in Geneva When Five English Tourists Agreed to Write Ghost Stories and Two of Them Invented Modern Genres
In June 1816 at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Lord Byron proposed that his five guests each write a ghost story. The volcanic winter from the Tambora eruption had ended summer in Europe. Mary Godwin, 18, wrote the opening of *Frankenstein*. Dr John Polidori wrote *The Vampyre*. Modern science fiction and modern vampire fiction began in the same villa in the same week.
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