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Aug 16, 2011

Brad rated it:

Much creepier than I expected and much smarter, The Island of Dr. Moreau, as with so much of H.G. Wells' science fiction, addressed the ethical pitfalls of a scientific eventuality far too early to be anything other than prophetic, yet it still manages to be more entertaining than preachy.

Edward Prendick finds himself shipwrecked on an island with Doctors Montgomery and Moreau. The former a follower of the latter, who just happens to be a mad vivisectionist. Beyond these scientists, More...

12 comments like (26 people liked it)

May 02, 2008

Jason rated it:

(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 V More...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2011

Alex rated it:

Okay, Island of Doctor Moreau is rollicking stuff: fast-moving, lurid, fun and, of course, the inspiration for the name of one of our most literate musical groups. (BTW, just think for a moment about what House of Pain were implying by calling themselves that. It's actually a pretty badass name.)

It's also the first Victorian book I've read that tackles Darwin. (I'm sure I'll find others.) Wells seems to get it: Dr. Moreau says, "I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2009

Chris rated it:

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 hooke More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Chris rated it:

It was great fun reading this book. Wells had a real knack for telling compelling stories involving complicated scientific issues of his day. But the real force of this story lies in the underlying theological/philosophical issues he brings up and develops. Wells was definitely a Darwinian evolutionist, but he also seemed to have almost a prophetic vision for where this kind of thinking can lead. If man is the result of millions of years of random evolution, then why not perform vivisection More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2008

Jared rated it:

This book is much more compelling than Time Machine. I had to keep reading and wanted to finish the story. As usual, he has some interesting and thought provoking themes which are still relevent to us. Should we be manipulating plants and animals to suit our needs? In our search for understanding, are we losing or ignoring important ethics? I think one of the most interesting questions is why Dr. Moreau thought the image of man was the perfect image. Anyway, like his other books, it is a q More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Benjamin rated it:

One thing I've found to be true about science fiction is that even though sci-fi authors aspire to speculate on future technology and culture, alien races, and faraway worlds, what they ultimately end up documenting most tellingly is their own time and place. What really shows up in the pages are the philosophical and cultural concerns of the author's own era, the timeless questions that come of being human, and a view of the future that is constrained by the limits of scientific knowledge at th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 15, 2009

Alex rated it:

"Poor Brutes...Before they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence began in agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau--and for what? It was the wantonness that stirred me."

I too began to pity the beasts. However, the real beast of this nove More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2010

Jayme rated it:

My favourite H.G. Wells story so far, this was a really creepy cool book. A cautionary tale about taking science too far. In some ways a twist on Frankenstein, where science goes wrong.

Dr. Moreau is an exiled scientist who has spent the last ten years populating his island with beings not quite human and not quite animal. I think Wells was a little ahead of his time as far as the idea of these hybrid humanimals he created for this story, but the actual science behind it, a weird sort More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2007

Jenny rated it:

Something I'll never forget--Wells' favorite adverb in this book is "presently." He makes good use of this word as his character Edward Prendick vividly retells his experience of being stranded on an island with the "mad scientist" Dr. Moreau and his sot of an assistant Montgomery, who's favorite quip is to call everyone "a silly ass." No wonder this one is not frequently taught in most high schools.

Moreau has a gift for surgery, vivisection is the per More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ellie rated it:

I had seen at least one movie version of this book, and perhaps even read it before as a child, when I picked it up last night. It really is an excellent book, though some of the sentiments are a bit outdated. It addresses the meaning of humanity, religion, scientific progress. At points it is frightening and at others poignant. The description of the screams of animals as Moreau vivisected them is very disturbing. The story reads as both a nightmare and a commentary on man. I’d like to read mor More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

Kevin rated it:

Review – The Island of Dr. Moreau

I was wary when I picked up The Island of Dr. Moreau, having for some reason not liked H.G. Wells in my younger days. I was surprised at how refreshing and strange the book was, and how well it read.

The book is not without its flaws. The denouement – that the strange inhabitants of the island are animals surgically altered to give them human form – is loudly telegraphed, even if you didn’t already know it. At the end, Wells feels inclined More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

Derek rated it:

I came to H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau at perhaps the perfect time, having just watched Shaun Monson's horrifying ~~documentary~~ snuff film about animal abuse, Earthlings. In other words, I was pretty primed to be appalled by Moreau's reprehensible experiments in vivisection and, well, I was. But Dr. Moreau is more than just mere shock factor; like all of Wells' work that I've read, it is rich in theology, ideology, allusion, and a healthy distrust of science and "progress."
More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 12, 2011

Trenton rated it:

I picked up this collection of HG Wells at a thrift store for only three dollars and it has all the classic Wells' stories in it so I was pretty excited. I think that a crutch when reading 'literary' works is that we tend to dismiss certain pieces because they are in a certain genre or have a certain stigma attached to them. I am very guilty of doing such tragic things, but I was happily proved wrong by Wells. This book is nothing short of an amazing ride. I read the 104 pages in just a couple o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 12, 2011

Tomhl rated it:

I found the science of this 1896 novel - physical transformation of animals into men through vivisection and mental transformation through hypnosis, and Wells' idea that the only thing preventing speech by animals to be the absence of a physiologically developed larynx - to be quaint. But this is not hard sf, it is social sf.

On the one level this is an effective horror/thriller written in the context of the Victorian England. But I feel the parallels of the Beast Men's Law to human rel More...

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Nov 01, 2011

Trisha rated it:

The Short and Sweet of It
After being rescued from a death at sea, Edward Prendick is cast ashore with his savior, Montgomery, on an island run by Dr. Moreau. Once there, he finds himself immersed in a mystery as strange cries are heard from beyond his doors.

A Bit of a Ramble
If anyone doesn't yet know, the main premise in this short novel is about playing god. The island is a medical compound-slash-dumping ground for Moreau's experiments which involve vivisecting animals in an More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Pikachu rated it:

It's kind of funny how H.G. Wells came up with the idea of genetic engineering almost a hundred years before it was really put into practice. That's what I love about classic science-fiction. It's kind of fun to see what actually happened and what was just the fanciful imaginings of the writer at the time. THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is about a man named Pendrick who gets shipwrecked on an island run by a crazy scientist who vivisects and grafts animals in order to turn them into humanoid beings. I More...

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Aug 07, 2011

Thom rated it:

I'd always been interested in the chilling tale of The Island of Doctor Moreau. I loved the idea of science creating monstrosities and pitting a lonely man against everything he doesn't understand. Having just finished the novel, I must say that it fulfilled my expectations nicely, but, as always, I have some mixed feelings.
H.G. Wells cautionary tale is one of my favourite representations of The Other. By creating creatures that are neither beast nor man, Wells has conjured up a very unn More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 03, 2011

Tony rated it:

A good read, not H.G.Wells best but still a good read. The amazing thing about this book is how much ahead of its time it really is. After reading Next by Michael Crichton a few weeks back and then reading The Island of Dr. Moreau the theme of genetic research and experimentation shines through in both novels even though they were written more than 100 years apart. H.G.Wells paints an interesting study of human nature and behavior when faced with adversity and scientific progress. For me the th More...

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Jul 26, 2011

Daniel rated it:

Lets remember that this book was written in 1896. You know what else came to be in 1896? Fucking Utah. Alright so with that we can draw a few conclusions.

Wells was way ahead of his time and 30 years ahead of the Golden age of Sci-Fi. He had nothing to go off of except maybe for Shelley and in that you can see one major similarity. Their fiction was heavily based off of science FACT, it was apparently very hard to veer off of this seeing as how SCIENTISTS couldn't do it smoothly. But More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Jo rated it:

The narrative of Charles Prendick, gentleman and scholar, is prefaced by an introduction stating that Prendick's written account follows but that the said gentleman subsequently lost his memory and did not remember the events given in his written account, and that the narrative has been released after his death by his nephew, again giving it the unreliability of a second hand account whilst also allowing it to be presented as a document of curiosity, something present writers don't often do and More...

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Jul 01, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

This review originally appeared at <a href="http://www.readinasinglesitting.com/2011/07/01/review-the-island-of-dr-moreau-by-hg-wells/>www.readinasinglesitting.com</a>

Ah, my third HG Wells in as many months, and the third book in which Wells gets his didactic on. Though I have awful memories of the film adaptation of this novel (oh, Marlon, what happened to you?), I haven’t actually enjoyed this novel in print form before. But as has been the case with all of Wells’s w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 28, 2011

Kelley rated it:

The Island of Dr. Moreau is a classic horror novel akin to Dracula and Frankenstein, in that it leaves the reader with a sense of unease long after the book is finished.

Maybe I am reading too far into this novel, but I feel like there were a lot of religious undertones to the storyline. When Dr. Moreau and Montgomery have perished, Prendick attempts to convince the beasts that the two "masters" are still alive, in order to prolong his own survival. The beasts are doubtful, b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 30, 2011

Ea added it

The mad scientist has been with us since the early 1800s. And while H.G. Wells didn't create the mad scientist stereotype, he certainly gave it a boost in his harrowing novella "The Island of Dr. Moreau" -- beast-men forced to live like humans, a crazy scientist carrying out mad plans, and a bland Englishman stuck in the middle of it.

After he is shipwrecked, the English gentleman Edward Prendick is rescued by a passing boat. The man who saved him, Montgomery, is taking a num More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2011

Alli rated it:

This story is about a man named Charles Edward Prendick, who was stranded on a ship called the Lady Vain. The Lady Vain crashed and killed everyone on the ship except for him. He was soon saved and put on a ship. However, this ship wasn’t going were he was hoping. He was forced to go to an Island with two men whose names were Montgomery, and Dr. Moreau. These two men have been going to this Island for 11 years, trying to get their experiment right. They were trying to successfully transform huma More...

1 comment like

Nov 10, 2010

Chase rated it:

H...G...Wells... Let me just say that I thoroughly enjoyed the intensity of this book while I was reading it. And then, I made the fateful mistake of trying to see what the background was on this book. And, naturally, the book was written with an alterior motive that...lame.

I'm not going to waste my thoughts, nor my time, to elaborate on what H.G (by the way, why the "h.g?" maybe I should go by A.C? Right? It's like Will.I.Am. Who does this? I can almost picture Her More...

1 comment like

Jun 22, 2010

Mary added it

Charles Pendrick, the narrator - ship-wrecked gentleman stranded on a nameless island.
Montgomery - former medical student, now assistant to an exiled scientist.
Dr. Moreau - physiologist and vivisector, disgraced by a muck-raking journalist who wrote a pamphlet called, "The Moreau Horrors," about a laboratory filled with flayed and mutilated animals.
"'Chance ... just chance,'" puts three Englishmen on an island in 1887. "'It's chance, I tell you...as eve More...

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Jul 08, 2009

Bruce rated it:

The novel opens with an introduction in which the protagonist feigns amnesia in order to escape responsibility for ambiguous episodes in the history. Prendick’s account of events in the dinghy sounds unconvincing, self-justifying, or at least as if much has been left unsaid. At the very least, the tone is such as to suggest that Prendick is not as innocent as he pretends; one suspects that what is unsaid is more important than the words spoken.

The creatures that Prendick encounters More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2011

Frederick rated it:

I expected this to be good, but I didn't expect it to be scary. But it is.
I also suspect it had a direct influence on a work of major importance: "Heart Of Darkness," by Joseph Conrad.
I see traces of this in two of George Orwell's novels, written half a century later: ANIMAL FARM and 1984.
Throw in LORD OF THE FLIES and you've got about 75 years' worth of books which take a lot of cues from THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU.
This book is less a warning about science t More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 13, 2011

Andrew rated it:

I remember watching the movie when I was younger and thinking, "What is this all about?" Later in life, I remembered how intriguing the concept was, and I had to read the book. H.G. Wells' writing is what made me interested in reading science fiction. This book highlights several important themes dealing with the ethical boundaries of science. During the time the book was written, there was great scientific debate in Britain on animal vivisection, which is the central concept of the na More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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