 First Published: 1896 Rating: Excellent "On February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. and longitude 107 degress W." Well, that was just creepy.
H. G. Wells wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1896--way too early for anyone to be writing a novel about bioengineering. But he did it anyway, because that’s the kind of guy that Wells was: a visionary. But kind of a twisted one. Says Wells: “The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, and I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation."
After being shipwrecked, rescued, set adrift, and rescued again, you might say Edward Prendick is having a bad time of it. Unfortunately for him, it’s about to get worse. Stranded on an island with Moreau, a secretive (and perhaps crazy) scientist, and his often-drunk assistant Montgomery, Prendick tries to make the best of things. Difficult, since his hosts have locked him out of all but one room in their compound and the rest of the island seems to be overrun by a tribe of unsettling “people.”
Prendick soon uncovers the nature of Moreau and Montgomery’s work--splicing animals together into horrifying man-like creatures that are only echoes of real men--and, with his safety from the pair ensured, the men form an uneasy alliance. But as things start to fall apart, Prendick realizes that it’s not the men he needs to fear--it’s the half-men and their steady reversion from man to beast.
Wells has been called didactic, and he is. But while The Island of Dr. Moreau is a cautionary novel about playing God, it’s by no means a technical manual on why we shouldn’t do this or that--it’s a quick, exciting read, with some breath-taking action sequences and a few of the more beautiful passages that I’ve read.
Moreover, it’s downright chilling that Wells’ was able to conjure such a scenario up so early on in the game of modern science. And as we move forward into a world where the lines between humans and animals is blurred by technology, it’s even more chilling to realize the consequences of mishandling scientific knowledge.
So there you have it: action, adventure, danger, science, shipwrecks--hey, there’s even a dog (kind of). And with many editions breezing in at under 150 pages, it won’t take you long to read this classic. “There is--though I do not know how there is or why there is--a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live.”
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