Nautilus is a bi-monthly magazine featuring science-related articles, interviews, book excerpts, short fiction, and more. It also has really cool artwork to go with the stories. Wendy gave me a gift subscription to it for my birthday last year, and so far, I really dig it.
We took a couple of trips late last year, and the Nautilus issues I brought along made for excellent reading at the airport and on the plane. For example, in the Nov/Dec issue from last year, there's a brief article about events in Japan called Rui-Katsu, which are "tear-seeking" events, where people gather to watch a series of really sad short films designed to make them cry. It's a socially acceptable way to release emotions. But, the article points out, crying events really aren't anything new. That's basically what the movie Godzilla was when it was released in 1954. The Japanese associated Godzilla with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but since it was considered inappropriate to talk about those events, people went to see the movie and cried violently as the monster destroyed Tokyo. Godzilla, basically, was a form of therapy for Japan.
This was such a revelation to me! I had never connected the dots between Godzilla and the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan in WWII. But now it makes so much sense.
Another article from the same issue talked about the explosion of Mount Tambora in 1815. It was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, and it altered weather patterns around the world. The following year, 1816, was called "The Year Without a Summer", or (my favorite) "Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-to-Death". The extreme weather triggered by the explosion led to crop failures and massive starvation. For the 3 years following the explosion, "to be alive, almost anywhere in the world, meant to be hungry."
Parts of Europe were especially hard hit with violent weather. One observer in Switzerland wrote that the tremendous thunder during one storm had a "bodily impact" like that of a heart attack.
Amidst all of this chaos, Frankenstein and Dracula were born. Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and a few friends spent the bizarre summer in Switzerland, staying warm by the fire, having a ghost story competition, and (possibly) smoking opium. Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein, and John Polidori, one of their companions, wrote The Vampyre, which later inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The article referenced a movie from the 1980's recreating that summer through the eyes of Mary Shelley, but, annoyingly, it didn't mention the movie's name! After a bit of research, I found there were actually two such movies in the 80's. I was able to get a copy of both through the library system in our area. The movie the article referred to was Gothic, directed by Ken Russell. It's a horror movie and unless you really, really enjoy horror movies, I don't recommend it. Stay away. The other was Haunted Summer, directed by Ivan Passer. It's a drama and was much more enjoyable. Neither movie really addresses the effects of Tambora, though, which was a little disappointing.