Classic Radio Sci-Fi: BBC Drama Collection

Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797, the daughter of two of the era’s most radical writers: William Godwin, the anarchist utopian, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died from the childbirth. After a difficult childhood under a demanding stepmother, she ran off to the Continent at age 17 with her father’s wealthy—and married—benefactor, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, although they did not get married until the suicide of Shelley’s wife two years later. Despite close intellectual bonds the marriage was unhappy, due to Percy Shelley’s regular campaigning for open “utopian” sexual relationships (with her sister, for one), and the deaths of three out of their four children. In 1817, while visiting Lord Byron at Lake Geneva, the three challenged one another to write a horror story. The result from Mary was the novel Frankenstein, an instant popular (although not critical) success. Four years later her peripatetic husband drowned in a boating accident. Mary Shelley never remarried, but she continued on as a successful writer until her death in London in 1851.

Stanislaw Lem was a Polish author best known for his 1961 science fiction novel Solaris. He also wrote several other SF works including Eden (1959) and His Master's Voice (1968). Lem's books have been translated into over 40 languages and sold over 45 million copies. He was awarded numerous honours for his writing, including the City of Kraków's Prize in Literature, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. Lem died in 2006, aged 84.