Fine weather in Geneva, summer 1816: no Frankenstein, no vampire

[Hendryk]

The fuss around Twilight has brought back to mind this article from The New Yorker:

In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron, fleeing marital difficulties, was holed up in a villa on Lake Geneva. With him was his personal physician, John Polidori, and nearby, in another house, his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley; Shelley’s mistress, Mary Godwin; and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, who was angling for Byron’s attention (with reason: she was pregnant by him). The weather that summer was cold and rainy. The friends spent hours in Byron’s drawing room, talking. One night, they read one another ghost stories, which were very popular at the time, and Byron suggested that they all write ghost stories of their own. Shelley and Clairmont produced nothing. Byron began a story and then laid it aside. But the remaining members of the summer party went to their desks and created the two most enduring figures of the modern horror genre. Mary Godwin, eighteen years old, began her novel “Frankenstein” (1818), and John Polidori, apparently following a sketch that Byron had written for his abandoned story, wrote “The Vampyre: A Tale” (1819). In Polidori’s narrative, the undead villain is a proud, handsome aristocrat, fatal to women. (Some say that Polidori based the character on Byron.) He’s interested only in virgins; he sucks their necks; they die; he lives. The modern vampire was born.

So, what if the weather is fine, and they spend their time outdoors instead of telling each other ghost stories, coming up in the process with two of the most fundamental figures of modern horror (and, it increasingly seems, chick lit)?

[The Red]

Both were influenced heavily by the great interest both writers and many intellectuals had in new technologies like blood transfusion and electricity, So it's not exactly implausible that similar characters would appear eventually. Especially Dracula who was based somewhat on true events.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Given that 1816 is 'the year without a summer' caused by the Tambora eruption, it would take a geological POD to change things, which would be 1) a LONG time ago, butterflying away Byron and 2) is generally considered the province of the ASB forum here.

A more plausible PoD would be doing the retreat a different year, no?