Over the period of a decade beginning with The Time Machine in 1895, H. G. Wells created some of his most popular fictions in the form of scientific romance novels. These books have captured the imagination of readers ever since and are arguably as popular today as they were more than one hundred years ago. Among these perhaps the strangest and best is The Island of Dr. Moreau. Undoubtedly influenced by Robinson Crusoe, but also by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island which was published only thirteen years earlier, this book goes far beyond those deserted island tales and looks forward to the twenty-first century and beyond. In its day it was considered blasphemous, but in the age of cloning its depiction of vivisection takes on new meaning while the blasphemy recedes into the background. Above all this is a good story with suspense that holds even after the first breathless reading that it usually inspires. The story is of such a suspenseful nature that I am reluctant to share any plot details for fear of spoiling the experience for the reader.

As with all great books the levels of meaning and reference in this book are many and the structure, a lost narrative found only after the author's death (reminiscent of Poe among others) is a nod to the era of the unreliable narrator for before his death Edward Pendrick, the narrator, claims to have no memory of the events which it described. Peter Straub, in his "Foreword" to the Modern Library edition, commented:

Given its infusion of the adventure tale with deep, pervasive doubt, Dr. Moreau can be seen as a unique and compelling alliance of Treasure Island and Joseph Conrad. (p. xvi)

I certainly agree with this assessment and believe that Wells, who was a good friend of Conrad as well as Henry James, Stephen Crane and Ford Madox Ford, might also agree with it. Like the best of Conrad reading this book was an exhilarating experience due both to its narrative and its deep meaning. ( )

I picked this up on a whim when Blindness (my then current read) proved to be too bleak for me and I was stuck at work without a book to read on the bus home. Set on the eponymous Island, which is rather well known by now given this book's classic status, the megalomaniacal Doctor Moreau experiments turning animals into humans.

This is a over-the-top gothic horror, with Well's usual blunt-force moralising, and the creepiest scientist-gone-mad-with-power ever to grace fiction.

Enjoy it? Absolutely.

Something about Victorian adventures, they're just awfully good fun. Usually I baulk at the whole mad scientist character (something about having a science background myself, it just makes me feel picked-upon), but I really enjoyed hissing and booing at this particular villain. And this book also had a nice frisson of horror at the end. ( )

H.G. Wells “scientific romances” have remained popular for over 100 years for a very good reason. They are exciting adventures that also give the reader something to think about and The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the better ones. In some ways it reads like a horror version of Robinson Crusoe with a touch of Gulliver’s Travels thrown in for good measure. In other ways it reveals the effects of the hubris of a scientist who goes beyond even Dr. Frankenstein in his quest to become a god creating his own life forms. This is a ripping good tale in a small volume that provides plenty of suspense and horror in addition to some moral issues to think about. Highly recommended ( )

I found this a rather compelling novella-length story. If you suspend judgments about 19th century biological theories, it's an exciting adventure story with a lot more atmosphere than I expected. There is also a great deal of social commentary. I can't help but wonder how the Victorian readers reacted to the body shots on the effects of a class system, the unflattering parodies of religion, and the warnings about equating pure scientific advances with true progress. The issues he touched upon are, perhaps, even more pertinent today than they were then.

I think this would make a fascinating Book Club read—quick, yet raising questions ranging from colonialism to cloning. ( )

The book develops well, the main character uncovers clues as to whats going on, jumps to reasonable, but invalid, conclusions, and the reader is drawn in. Everything seems reasonable and develops properly. As events unfold, the tone becomes suspenseful and perhaps a bit of horror. The book plays with mans dominance over nature and some of the morals, Dr. Moreau was outcast for his work, and finds his own way to continue, with consequences. ( )

This is adventure story by H.G.Wells.The main character traveled Doctro Moreau's island.
I thought that this story is difficult to imagine for me.But the vocabulary level is normal,I think. ( )

Random Comments review ( )

I didn't like this book very much. There was no romance factor, like there was in the movie. I usually prefer books over movies, but not this time. It's written well, and the plot doesn't have any holes, but I just couldn't get a feeling for it. 1.5 out of 5 top reasons why I'm against genetic engineering. ( )

Overall a good book, Wells’ ability to create a haunting and suspenseful plot doesn’t fail him here. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I’m glad I read the book in the day, because the suspense up to it, was creepy. This isn’t a book to read at night, especially if you aren’t familiar with how the story goes. But, I found that it fell a little short with what I expected, I thought it would be a lot scarier and a little less boring periods or more drawn out in how in-depth they go to show what exactly went on with the experiments. Perhaps Wells intentions were to let our imaginations fill this in for us. It’s not a bad book, but I was expecting something different, the story is mysterious and I enjoyed the characters for the most part, but there was just something extra missing, that would have made this an excellent book, but I don’t know what exactly that is, maybe it’s because the element of surprise isn’t there, so I know what will eventually come, hmm.

It has made me want to watch the 1996 movie again, although memory serves me it was less scary and more humours, I’m a fan of David Thewlis, so I may just give it another shot. Good book overall.

Book Review can also be found at my book review blog
http://juliebooks.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )

I knew the high level concept of this book from allusions in other stories and movies, but I'd never read the original novel. It was a bit different from what I expected.

The writing style is very accessible and fluid while also being jam-packed with very vivid and detailed descriptions as well as some in-depth scientific and moralistic discussions. The first few pages were a little slow, but the rest of the book, except for a paragraph here and there, flew by and kept me very hooked.

The story is presented as a written report from the point of view of a narrator who finds himself stranded on the island for a time after some disasters at sea. The narrator has some scientific background which lends to very analytical and in-depth commentary.

Without adding any real spoilers, the summary is this: Doctor Moreau, after being chased out of London for his practices, is living on an island in the pacific conducting outrageous experiments. Our narrator, Pendrick, finds the island populated with creatures that are neither completely human nor completely bestial...they are aberrations....creatures partially human and partially beasts....the face of a man with almost snout-like nose and lips, pointed hairy ears, elongated torso and shorter than normal legs, etc., etc., etc. The horrors and grotesque nature of the experiments are explored in depth and naturally progress to some rather disturbing conclusions.

I rather enjoyed the story and found myself immersed in the plot and the concepts. My only real complaint by the end of the book was that it all ended too quickly. I would have loved another 50 or 100 pages. Still, it is a tightly woven tale with a lot of meet in it to leave you thinking.

Wells presents a thoughtful narrative addressing some of the social concerns of his day through this science-fiction story. At that point in history (late 1800s), this was all seen as fiction but based on the fears people had of experiments in the medical community. It's even more potent now, since some 30-50 years after the book, the Nazis engaged in similar "scientific" experimentation during the Holocaust (not with the same results, but with a similar type of horror upon society).

I really liked the way the book finished up. In the last few pages, we find our narrator trying to sort through everything he's witnessed and come to terms with it. I really enjoyed the way Wells shows him trying to recognize "humanity" in people and distinguish between the "human" and the "animal."

A great read.

*****
4.5 stars (out of 5) ( )

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

After his ship, the Lady Vain, collides with a derelict, Edward Prendick becomes stranded at sea with two of his shipmates. After his shipmates attack and drown one another, Prendick is entirely alone at the mercy of the ocean. Famished and bleary-eyed, Prendick wakes up to a strange face and aboard a strange ship. He is introduced to Montgomery, a man who seems leery to reveal too much about himself. When the ship approaches land, the ship's owner refuses to keep Prendick aboard, and he is cast back out to a sea in a waterlogged dingey. Upon realizing this, Montgomery, now in the company of an even stranger man, tows Prendick to his island home. It is on this island that Prendick encounters oddly misshapen creatures known as the Beast People.

The man with Montgomery introduces himself as Doctor Moreau. It takes Prendick a while to remember where he heard the name, but only realizes what danger he's in when he does. Prendick finds he is on an island full of Moreau's victims, degraded and mercilessly mutilated. As Prednick becomes acquainted with these victims, his fear of Moreau grows. Prendick must find a way off the island, or perhaps suffer a fate he feels is much worse than death.

I thought this was a great story, though it was difficult for me to read in parts. Some of the wording used seemed redundant to me. I did take notice that the story was told from a first-person point of view, as it would be written in a personal diary. This might excuse the overuse of words like "presently" and "grotesque," and expressions like "silly ass." The book would've been perfect, in my eyes, if Wells had made use of a thesaurus.

Normally, I like to read a book before seeing it acted out on film. This book was an exception to the rule; I saw the movie first. After reading the book, the movie almost seems like another story entirely. I enjoyed both, but thought the book was much more effective. There was an element from the movie, however, that I thought was a vital part of the story, yet it wasn't included in the book. In the movie, when Prendick finally discovers that his blood is being used in Moreau's experiments, it puts a whole new spin on things. I was disappointed to realize that this was not a part of the original story.

Moreau's attitude towards his victims was another major difference I noticed between the book and the movie. In the movie, Moreau treats his victims like his own children, and seems proud to act as a god to the creatures. In the book, Moreau is disgusted with or ashamed of his work, and feels as though each creature reminds him of his failure to achieve perfection. The Beast People see him as a god, yes, but they fear and loathe him.

In the movie, I liked how each of the animals had a different level of respect for Moreau. Most of them trusted Moreau on some level. Hyena was the one to question things after Jaguar's death, and was the one to eventually kill Moreau.

In the book, the Beast People all seemed to have similar personalities. The Hyena-Man was still a hideous and formidable creature, but had a lesser role in the story. A vivisected puma was the creature that eventually killed Moreau.

My favorite character, both in the book and in the movie, was Montgomery, a young and slightly nihilistic biologist who unknowingly got in over his head by joining Moreau in his gruesome experiments.

My favorite part of this book was Chapter 14, in which Moreau explains how he began his experiments, why he does the things he does, and why he believes that pain is a small price to pay for significant advancement in the scientific fields. As a person (and a scientist) who is strongly opposed to vivisection, Moreau's explanation had a few points to challenge my views. His words disturbed me in a rather pleasant way--they made me think. Of course, I'm still opposed to vivisection, but this chapter shed light on a point of view I always had a difficult time understanding, and may help me form a more potent argument to support my own.

The thing I was most surprised with was that Wells didn't have to go into terribly descriptive detail involving the vivisection in order to communicate the degree to which the animals were suffering. I'm not easily shocked, but this story made me cringe. ( )

Anyone even moderately literate should be familiar with the premise of this 19th century "classic" by renowned science fiction author H. G. Wells. Young man is shipwrecked, rescued and finds himself on a South Pacific island, inhabited by prototypical mad scientist Dr. Moreau. Moreau is a vivisectionist who has created a variety of "beasts" through efforts to convert animals to humans. Mayhem ensues.

Wells and contemporary Jules Verne have been hailed as visionaries, men ahead of their times. Of the two, Wells's work has arguably aged more gracefully. While I found this book moderately entertaining, the premise was simply too absurd to draw me in. I could swallow some of the physiological biology, however at the point where animals began speaking as well educated Englishmen, Wells lost me.

Certainly, the underlying theme has resonance today, in an era of increasing bio-medical engineering, and certainly, social commentary was among Wells's strong suits. However, in my opinion, this novella (175 pages) simply doesn't rate the accolades it has garnered. ( )

A very quick read, but highly recommended. Considering this novel was originally published in 1896, the forsight of H.G. Wells is absolutely amazing. The fear that Edward feels when he hears the animal screams coming from behind the locked door, the panick of being lost in the woods, all of it is felt first hand thanks to Wells' magnificent writing. ( )

Trailblazing for its time, the lack of climax detracts from this eerie story which plods along describing the horrors of Dr. Moreau's experiments in turning beasts to men. I found it pretty dull. Perhaps I have just been spoiled by too many action flicks, but I greatly preferred his novel 'War of the Worlds'. ( )

This book was much more eerie than War of the Worlds. This one tread too dangerously what could actually happen in this era. Although this book was written as a commentary on Evolution, with half man, half beast creatures roaming on a deserted island, it can also be a commentary on stem-cell research and cloning.

I’m not against scientific advances, I hope I get to see more revolutional scientific breakthroughs in my lifetime. I just wonder and worry at the greed and ego that comes along with it. You are, in a sense playing God, which is what Dr. Moreau was to his Beast People. He deified himself to their simple minds, and you could even see a transformation of the narrator, from innocent observer, to almost falling into the same mind-frame of Moreau when trying to control and rule over the Beast People.

More at: http://thenovelworld.com ( )

This diverting book is a gem for so many reasons. First is Herbert's brilliant language. His vocabulary is delightful and does not seem forced. When Pendrick is lost in the forest, confused as to the shadows around him...and perhaps stalking him, his curiosity mixed with inquiry also notices "a peculiar fungus branched and corrugated like a foliaceous lichen but deliquescing into slime at the touch." Herbert uses his words to convey, in a single sentence, the learnedness of his protagonist and Pendrick's observational acuity. This lends the next sentence gravity..."And then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns, I came upon an unpleasant thing..."
The unpleasant thing he came across was the detritus of another hallmark of great science fiction: utter believability. The 21st century philistine would lament that Herbert's hypothesis is hopelessly out of date. Vivisection, and the grafting of parts cannot hope to achieve anything but the death of a creature; the result of such torture would be inhuman. This is seen by this philistine as a fault. Not so. Herbert's villain is someone we know. The Doctor is cold, rational. His experimentation - even his employment of mysticism to calm his creation's urges - are the machinations of a scientist. Is he mad? Is he cruel? Herbert poses these questions AND answers them, which pulls him from the futurists into the pantheon of science fiction. His is not a possible world, it's a realistic world. Which brings us to the third mark of perfection in this book. It is commentary. One can read The Island of Dr. Moreau, be scared and amazed and curious. One can also read the book and see the terrible exhiliration into which Herbert tapped in writing this book. This book is a testament to the confusion of science and progress. Herbert recognizes the possibilities and creates a story populated with maybes and horrors that makes us think about our own world; no less frightening a place for its lack of chimeras that speak. ( )

much better than i expected. short(a great plus), scary and peculiar. ( )

That Wells was a visionary, and one of the most far-sighted and innovative writers of imaginative literature the human race has ever produced… well, everyone says that, and it’s a bit of a cliche. What’s worth knowing about his stuff (and a lot of critics seem to underplay this) is that lots of his books are just REALLY GOOD FUN - and folks, this is a fine example. For a novel written more than a hundred and ten years ago it goes at a cracking pace: by just five pages in, the characters are stranded at sea, starving and drawing lots over who’s going to be cannibalized -- and, amazingly, the book never really lets up from there. It’s like a fever hallucination full of vivisection and mutants and horror, filtered through a contagious atmosphere of shimmering jungle heat. The ideas are great, sure, but the real triumph, it seems to me, is in how sure-footedly punchy and unpretentious the writing is: it’s wild and mad and deliriously evocative, but in its understated way it’s also real, it’s fierce, and it’s all over-and-out in just a hair under two hundred pages, without ever having lost its initial intensity. This was the second time I’ve read the book now and - like malaria - I fully expect to face bouts of reading it again and again every so often for the rest of my life. All I can say is, lucky me. And if you haven’t read The Island of Doctor Moreau yet, lucky /you/. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label

Book #16: The Island of Dr Moreau, by HG Wells (1896)

The story in a nutshell:
Along with French author Jules Verne, the British HG Wells is considered one of the co-founders of the "science-fiction" genre*, in which the latest advances in that field are elegantly enfolded into thrilling or sometimes philosophical fictional narratives. (So in other words, think of him much more as the spiritual godfather of Michael Crichton than Isaac Asimov.) And indeed, his early-career masterpiece The Island of Dr Moreau contains not a single fantastical element at all, but is rather a chilling extrapolation of what was happening at the time in the real world of medicine, starting as these Victorian novels often do with a shipwreck in the middle of an ocean, and of our everyman hero (a gentleman named Prendick) getting picked up by a mysterious ship out in the South Seas somewhere. Taken back to the remote tropical island where his rescuers are heading, he is there introduced to our eponymous doctor, a creepy former London surgeon who was disbarred from his profession for shady ethical practices.

And sure enough, it's no coincidence that Moreau happens to be on this remote island, and is having his nutso alcoholic nihilist assistant run around the various nearby islands and acquire as many exotic animals as possible; turns out that he has continued his formerly banned research here, a truly horrific series of experiments that has him seeing if he can somehow turn an animal into a fully rational human, through an elaborate series of delicate surgeries and psychological conditioning. Needless to say, he hasn't exactly succeeded yet, leaving the three humans on an island full of snarling, retarded man-beasts; to protect themselves, Moreau and the assistant have established among the beasts what they call "The Law," a combination of rational rules and religious dogma that keep the human/animal hybrids just barely civilized and not in a constant state of violent bloodlust. The majority of the book, then, concerns Prendick's time on the island and the ways that this delicate peace of course starts quickly falling apart; I'll leave the actual plotline itself as unspoken as possible, in that this 112-year-old story is actually still thrillingly surprising.

The argument for it being a classic:
Like many of the books reviewed here as part of the CCLaP 100, there is a strong argument for The Island of Dr Moreau being a classic based on its historical, trailblazing aspects; it's one of a handful of books, after all, to singlehandedly kick off the entire genre of science-fiction (now with millions of fans and which generates billions of dollars a year in revenue), not to mention such speculative tech writers as the aforementioned Crichton, Tom Clancey and more. But on top of this, though, this particular book is important too because it's held up so well over the decades, certainly much better than almost all of its Victorian fantastical counterparts; as its many fans will tell you, it still has the power to shock and disturb, and deals with issues like genetic engineering and the ethical role of doctors that are surprisingly relevant to this day. If you're going to pick any of the pseudo-science-babble books of the late 1800s to designate as a must-read, fans say, best to pick a book like this, not only as historically relevant as the others but simply a much more entertaining modern read.

The argument against:
A weak argument today at best; like many other Victorian fantastical tales, I suppose you can argue that Dr Moreau is too flippant and garish a tale, too focused on pleasing a lurid, mainstream crowd. But then that gets us into the whole subject of whether the forefathers of the various modern artistic genres out there even deserve to be recognized as the authors of "classics," people such as Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and the aforementioned Jules Verne; and I think most intelligent people at this point in history would say that these are indeed authors worthy of "classic" status, making this not really much of an argument at all.

My verdict:
Ah, how nice to again come across a book whose "classic" status seems to not be questioned by very many people at all; it happens so rarely, after all, much more rarely than you would think for a series of book reviews all centered around so-called classics. And indeed, it was a sincere and pleasant surprise to read Dr Moreau for the first time (I haven't even seen any of the movie versions) and discover just how legitimately scary and gross and great it was to modern eyes, after a year now of such badly dated 1800s prose like is found in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (to mention one infamous example). Now that I've sampled both, I can definitively state that Wells was a much better writer than Verne, and that his titles can hold up in a canon list without necessarily the Roger-Marin-style asterisk that so many other Victorian genre authors need. That said, please be aware that this is a surprisingly disgusting book, one that deals with such then-current hot topics as vivisection (or the act of cutting open animals while still alive, in order to figure out how their insides work); but then again, it also gets you thinking about all kinds of interesting ethical questions still relevant to current society, like whether the animalistic part of our brains can ever be truly tamed and controlled (another hot topic among Victorians), and if the torture and slaughter of animals can ever be a morally justifiable action. It not only gets an enthusiastic yes from me today, but I can even declare it better than a lot of the contemporary genre novels I've read in the last year. Highly recommended.

Is it a classic? Oh my, yes

*And by the way, it's no surprise that Wells ended up as one of the founders of science-fiction; he was actually a dual student of biology and sociology at university, who pursued not only creative writing as a lucrative hobby at the same time but also the visual arts as well. In fact, Wells was much, much more well-known when alive as a brilliant political analyst, socialist activist, and a forefather of "futurism:" among other accomplishments, in the 1910s he predicted the outbreak of World War I, in the '20s predicted that the war's destruction would pave the way for the rise of fascism, in the '30s predicted that fascism would culminate in another world war right around 1940, and in the '40s called for the creation of what we now know as Wikipedia (which he called the "World Brain"). Oh yeah, and he was a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, and incidentally was the inventor of the world's very first miniature war-game ("Little Wars," in 1913). What a surprisingly fascinating guy! ( )

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/159

An Englishman is rescued twice, once from a shipwreck, and once from being abandoned by the captain of the ship who rescued him.

Dr. Moreau takes him into his home, and slowly it dawns on the horrified individual that Moreau is basically insane, and has been experimenting with enhancing animal intelligence. The relationship between the creations and Moreau is very warped, and a large part of the horror.

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/island-of-dr-moreau-h-g-wells.html ( )

The story of a man whose ship goes down in the Pacific Ocean. He is rescued by another ship, which then takes him to a strange island. On the island lives Dr Moreau. But what is he doing there? And what are the strange things in the jungle? This is a classic adventure story, which is still pretty interesting. ( )

A little too grizzly for my tastes...the narrator of the story does nothing to garner my sympathies and all in all it was not a book that made me want to keep turning the pages... ( )

the most accurate word i can come up with to describe the experience of reading this book is, "eh." i know this book was well ahead of its time, but sadly it is also well behind ours. it proved to be a bit of a let-down, considering its status as a classic of the genre. a book that should have taken all of 2 or 3 hours to read stretched on for the better part of a day, mainly because i just couldn't find myself engrossed in the story to any significant extent, and instead allowed myself to be regularly distracted.

while the story wasn't bad enough to put the book down and give up, it was only worth finishing just barely. the narration grew especially bad towards the end - i'd say the last 2-3 chapters - where i found myself unable to continue "willfully suspending disbelief"... at this point, any plausibility the story had seemed to have vanished at the same rate as the biological traits of the monsters did. the most redeeming quality of this book lies in its religious commentary. ( )

A great book! Sometimes disturbing, definitely gives you goosebumps, but it is fascinating, especially considering the time it was written. H. G. Wells was really ahead of his time in many of his books. This one is creepy, but fascinating, also on a philosophical and moral scale. The line between human and animal is never as thin as after reading this book! ( )

Creepy story of an island where tests are being done on animals. ( )