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tea_fiction_rain 's review for:
The Island of Doctor Moreau
by H.G. Wells
Wells does it again! He has written a beautifully grotesque novel about the morality and ethics of genetics and coupled with the integrity of our science and technology- how it affects nature.
Edward Prendig shipwrecks and is the sole survivor, starving and dehydrated when he is happened upon by a ship with a doctor on board who takes pity on him and nurses him back to health. He tells Prendig that they are on their way to an island he lives on with an array of live animals.. They arrive on the Island of Doctor Moreau, Prendig has a tickling at the back of his mind that he recalls that name from somewhere... He is still exhausted and goes to sleep. The next day while wandering, Prendig happens upon humanoid creatures that are more animal like than human like and he is scared half to death.
Moreau's self righteous speech to Prendig about his unchecked cruelty and completely purposeful lack of morals in pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, knowing exactly the extreme fear and insurmountable pain he is creating is in a word: chilling.
"Very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion."
"I've not confined myself to man- making."
"And I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell."
"Sympathetic pain,-all I know of it I remember as a thing I used to suffer from years ago."
The story is very intense. I loved every moment of this early body horror fiction. A MUST read for fans of the genre, especially foundational SF.
Edward Prendig shipwrecks and is the sole survivor, starving and dehydrated when he is happened upon by a ship with a doctor on board who takes pity on him and nurses him back to health. He tells Prendig that they are on their way to an island he lives on with an array of live animals.. They arrive on the Island of Doctor Moreau, Prendig has a tickling at the back of his mind that he recalls that name from somewhere... He is still exhausted and goes to sleep. The next day while wandering, Prendig happens upon humanoid creatures that are more animal like than human like and he is scared half to death.
Moreau's self righteous speech to Prendig about his unchecked cruelty and completely purposeful lack of morals in pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, knowing exactly the extreme fear and insurmountable pain he is creating is in a word: chilling.
"Very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion."
"I've not confined myself to man- making."
"And I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell."
"Sympathetic pain,-all I know of it I remember as a thing I used to suffer from years ago."
The story is very intense. I loved every moment of this early body horror fiction. A MUST read for fans of the genre, especially foundational SF.