The Island of Dr Moreau (Cathedral Classics)

The Island of Dr Moreau is both an exciting adventure story, and H G Wells' prescient critique of the dangers of Science shorn of all emotion, of research driven only by a cold intellectual curiosity. Written over a hundred years ago, the book's themes are especially relevant today, when genetic manipulation of both plants and animals has turned the authors concerns from fantasy to disconcerting reality.

A shipwreck in the South Seas, a palm-tree paradise where a mad doctor conducts vile experiments, animals that become human and then "beastly" in ways they never were before--it's the stuff of high adventure. It's also a parable about Darwinian theory, a social satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), and a bloody tale of horror. Or, as H. G. Wells himself wrote about this story, "The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, and I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation." This colorful tale by the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds lit a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication in 1896.