https://timey.org/tags/history-of-science/ Recent content in History of Science on Timey.org Hugo en-us Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://timey.org/the-summer-mary-shelley-invented-science-fiction/ Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://timey.org/the-summer-mary-shelley-invented-science-fiction/ In June 1816, Mary Godwin was eighteen years old and living in a rented villa on the shores of Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Byron’s physician John Polidori, and Byron’s companion Claire Clairmont. The weather was catastrophically bad — cold, dark, and rainy throughout a summer that should have been Mediterranean. They were indoors most of the time, reading German ghost stories aloud and eventually agreeing on a competition: each of them would write a supernatural tale.