The Island of Dr Moreau

[aquarium444]

Has anyone read this H.G. Wells book? I don't read that many novels, although I am going to give this one a try. I have the recording on iTunes just in case I need some backup supplement. I can read through the e-book and than hit it again, the part I just read, with the recording. It is only 251 pages long on the Reader compared to something like "Bleak House" which was about 850 pages. I can handle this. It is a horror genre type which is my favorite kind of story. I'm not sure about how well the the book is written, but Wells is a popular name. If anyone has read it, let me know what you thought of it. I figure that I'm going to start it next week, just for the purpose of trying something new. There are a few other horror titles that I intend to read. I've never tried anything written by this author. It looks like he has more than one good title.

[mtpspur]

To be honest I haven't read THIS one but I have read Time Machine, Invisible Man, First Men in the Moon and War of the Worlds. I liked them well enough just never got around to Island. If you remember they were written almost 100 years ago and keep that in context you should be fine.

[aquarium444]

That long ago, hey. That makes it interesting. I'm going to read it regardless, but I'll keep that in mind. That actually sounds just fine. A hundred years it is.

[mal4mac]

It's not on my re-read list, unlike Time Machine, Invisible Man & War of the Worlds. No reason not to read it, of course. But if you don't like it, don't give up on Wells! Bleak House is far superior to anything Wells has written. Why not try it, and see how it goes? I think it starts wonderfully, with Dickens' evocation of fog -- no doubt a metaphor for the legal system, but great even if just taken literally:

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon..."

[aquarium444]

I have it ready on the Reader, so I am committed. I almost feel like starting it now but I have to finish a piece of writing. That is helpful though and out of that list, I would be most interested in "The Time Machine" if I were to try another of his books, but too bad he didn't write about vampires.

[Katy North]

When reading older science fiction, I think it is important to realize that any book written is exceptional, not necessarily for it's writing style but for the amount of creativity demonstrated by the authors. For example, reading Wells' War of the Worlds today today may seem a little unexceptional, given that we've been inundated with fiction and movies about alien contact. However, if you take it in context of about 100 years ago, when maybe the only other well known science fiction author was Jules Verne, you have something extraordinary and unique.

In the 1930s Wells' "War of the Worlds" was read on radio, and there was a mass panic in the places it was broadcast because people thought that the alien invasion was real, and that the reading was a news broadcast and not fiction.

I looked up The Island of Dr. Moreau on Wikipedia, and it seems that the genre of this book is supposed to be science fiction, not horror. This book was written during the latter part of the 1800s, when Great Britain's scientific community was debating the morality of animal vivisection... (experimenting on and studying an animal by cutting it open while it was still alive). Apparently a couple years after this book was written "The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection" was formed.

Knowing this might give you some historical context for this book... which for me always helps me appreciate a book more!

[Voivod30]

I love what I've read from H.G. Wells and though it has been a while I recall the book in question being possibly my favorite. I've also read War Of The Worlds, the Time Machine, the Invisible Man as well as a few of his short stories such as the Country of the Blind, the Star, the New Accelerator, the Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes, Under the Knife and the Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper all of which were any where from good to excellent. I'm also thinking about reading the Dicken's novel at some point soon. I've read A Tale Of Two Cities, Great Expectations (probably my favorite book), David Copperfield and Hard Times but for some reason the novel in question intimidates me a bit mostly due to the length. For what it's worth though I've generally found Dickens' novels to be concise and very easy to read.

[Modest Proposal]

I really enjoyed the novel, though I am somewhat of a Wells enthusiast, especially since we were learning about the battles over vivisection that were taking place at the time of its writing.

[aquarium444]

I started to look at it already. It helps knowing that it is classified as science fiction rather than horror. As I read it, I can see how that makes sense. He must have already been thinking about "War of the Worlds" while he was writing this book.

Well I'll have to see what I think about science fiction than. I don't have any thoughts about vivisection but it looks like the doctor had to do his work on this island rather than in London.

[papayahed]

It was a book club selection if you would like to take a look at the thread:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16095

[aquarium444]

I'll read that thread but I'll wait until after I finish the story in order to avoid spoilers. I did see the movie some years ago, and they might have done two movies, I forget. If it is on iTunes, I'll throw it down as well after I finish reading.

[applepie]

It's been a lot of years since I've read this, but it is one of my favorites. I may have to find a copy and read along as well. Wells was truly a wonder in writing SciFi, and this was one of his more memorable books. I remember my grandma having an old box set of all his works which is where I first started to read and love Wells. Enjoy the book:)

[neilgee]

Did anybody notice that Moreau has a chapter that is completely lifted from The Time Machine, a chapter where the protagonist runs into some Woods, Wells took the chapter wholesale and transplanted it in the new book. I thought that was very lazy.

[aquarium444]

There is some similarity between Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear" and his other story "The Rats in the Walls". They have a similar feel and they touch on the same issue. They are not identical. I liked "The Rats in the Walls" better.

The authors must work with their imaginations. They have to keep trying to express their ideas until they fit into a plot. I felt that a lot was left out in "The Rats in the Walls". Yet is was done much better than "The Lurking Fear", which was a longer story. You could say that he didn't complete the idea, but it is the best that we have, and it will remain that way forever.

I read 1/4 of it so far. It is not like Lovecraft's writing, but it is an interesting story. The plot is thickening. There isn't nearly as much descriptive detail in this style of writing. I will complete the book though and I can tell that a big part of the book is the mystery as to the inhabitants of the island. Unfortunately I already know that the inhabitance are what they are, so it does detract. It seems to me that someone like Dan Brown should be able to write this way, but I don't know if he would be capable of matching up with Lovecraft. One major point that needs to be talked about is the topic of originality. Wells probably covered a lot of ground dealing with subjects that had readers wondering about scientific experiments and the human beings involved. It must have been a bit scary, to give people knowledge to change or effect life and death. Such things are possible to talk about, and as it turned out, 100 years later, the excitement has ended.

Over 1/2 way through it. I hear that vivisection is one of the large issues of the book, and experiments on animals are done in the book, yet vivisection does not jump out at me as a morality issue. There is a discussion about pain that is a little bit interesting. Anyway, Moreau is an good example of a mad doctor. There are other sci-fi books that have this type of a character in them, that I have seen before. The last 100 pages should be interesting. In modern medicine from what I have heard, operations where heart transplants have been done have had mixed results. Often the new heart will be rejected by the tissue of the host. How could Moreau make additions to the brains of these animals?