Origin of life theories

So I finally got around to reading Frankenstein, and I'm a ways into it, and it's gotten me interested in the origin of life. Apparently no one has any firm idea how life 'happened', as it were.

I'm reading the abiogenesis article on Wikipedia (in before "Wikipedia can be changed by anyone, it's totally false!", it's reliable enough for me.), and the only guy that had any clue what was going on was Alexander Oparin.

Now, I'm no scientist, but it seems completely mind-boggling to me that simple molecules could spontaneously become autonomous due to the chemical properties of their constituent atoms.

Any intelligent anons care to spread the intelligence, or can recommend any reading other than Wikipedia to try to comprehend this concept?

Also read about hyperthermophile bacteria. They've been found inside hydrothermal vents. They have fairly alien chemosynthetic metabolisms, but they still use DNA. These sorts of organisms don't depend on the sun, or oxygen, and could have been alive on the early earth, back when it didn't have oxygen in the atmosphere. Or they could have evolved from more modern bacteria ... but i guess they've sequenced the DNA and counted mutations in some common, conserved gene, like maybe histones? hmm? i dunno.