The Island of Dr. Moreau
Ranked among the classic novels of the English language and the inspiration for several unforgettable movies, this early work of H. G. Wells was greeted in 1896 by howls of protest from reviewers, who found it horrifying and blasphemous. They wanted to know more about the wondrous possibilities of science shown in his first book, The Time Machine, not its potential for misuse and terror. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life. While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells’s prediction of the ethical issues raised by producing “smarter” human beings or bringing back extinct species. These levels of interpretation add a richness to Prendick’s adventures on Dr. Moreau’s island of lost souls without distracting from what is still a rip-roaring good read.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
20mentions
18people
2010–2026years
35% recommend65% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian
Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...
- Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books
- Definitely do Time Machine first, then his other "classics for a reason" the War of the Worlds, the Invisible Man, the Island of Dr Moreau, and IMO the Food of the Gods. His work tends to have a sort of bipartite structure where the second half diverges quite a bit from the first or there is a major thematic shift partway, usually as a consequence of "committing to the bit." Sometimes it seems like he has lost the plot, other times that he has found it. But the books are extremely readable.
- If you want to know what science fiction thought of this kind of thing in 1896, read the Island of Dr Moreau -- an eccentric scientist in exile modifies animals into more human forms.
- Both have been mentioned a bunch of times, but I also find that the Tao Te Ching [0] and The Prince [1] both pop into my head, in fragments, from time to time when I'm thinking about the modern world and the humans in it.
Also, if you're wondering where things like genome editing lead us, they lead us to The Island of Dr. Moreau [2] (H.G. Wells, 1896).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau
- Me too. "The Island of Dr. Moreau".
