What occupied them more than anything else was the search for eternal life—the transmutation of the dead into the living. And so they began to experiment on biological matter. A century ago, a university student named Victor Frankenstein proved that it could be done, that dead matter could once again be brought to life. He paid a terrible price for the success of his experiments. But my father believed his aims could be achieved by other means. Frankenstein was his inspiration, and the inspiration for those who, like him, wished to transmute not base metals, but human beings.
