Secrets of the Forsaken

James R. Parker, PhD is a professor of Art and Digital Media at the University of Calgary. His areas of research include computer games and media art, computer simulation, and educational technology. Dr. Parker is the author of Game Development Using Python, 2/E (Mercury Learning) and The Guide to Simulations and Games (Wiley).

Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike is assistant professor in the Department of English and Wayne O. McCready Emerging Fellow at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction, there's more, Double Wahala, Double Trouble, and Wish Maker.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, into a life of personal tragedy. In 1816, she married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and that summer traveled with him and a host of other Romantic intellectuals to Geneva. Her greatest achievement was piecing together one of the most terrifying and renowned stories of all time: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelley said she conceived of Frankenstein in “a waking dream.” This vision was simply of a student kneeling before a corpse brought to life. Yet this tale of a mad creator and his abomination has inspired a multitude of storytellers and artists. She died on February 1, 1851.

Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature of American fiction, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He died in 1910.