The Island of Doctor Moreau(Illustrated) E-Book

H G Wells

• Herausgeber: Micheal Smith
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

• Illustrated Edition: Includes 20 stunning illustrations that bring the story's thrilling and unsettling moments to life.
• Bonus Features: Contains a detailed summary, a comprehensive list of characters, and a captivating biography of the author, H.G. Wells, providing deeper insight into the classic tale.

Dive into the heart of darkness and discovery with H.G. Wells's timeless science fiction masterpiece, The Island of Doctor Moreau. This illustrated edition breathes new life into Wells's chilling narrative, enriched with 20 evocative illustrations that capture the imagination and enhance the reading experience. Beyond the tale itself, this edition offers readers a comprehensive summary, an in-depth character list, and a fascinating biography of H.G. Wells, offering a complete package for both newcomers and returning fans.
Set on a secluded island, the story unfolds through the eyes of Edward Prendick, a shipwreck survivor who stumbles upon the secretive experiments of the notorious Doctor Moreau. Moreau, a scientist with godlike ambitions, has embarked on a quest to transform animals into human-like beings through vivisection and genetic engineering. What follows is a harrowing exploration of the boundaries of science and morality, civilization and savagery, and the essence of humanity itself.
As Prendick delves deeper into the mysteries of the island, he encounters a cast of unforgettable characters — from the tragic figures of the Beast Folk to the complex personalities of Moreau and his assistant, Montgomery. Each illustration in this edition highlights key moments and characters, enriching the narrative and inviting readers to visualize the story's most compelling scenes.
The Island of Doctor Moreau is not just a tale of adventure and horror; it is a profound commentary on human nature, scientific hubris, and the ethical dilemmas that arise when man seeks to play god. This illustrated edition, with its additional content, offers a comprehensive look at one of science fiction's most enduring stories, ensuring that Wells's thought-provoking novel remains accessible and engaging for today's readers.
Embark on a journey to The Island of Doctor Moreau, where the limits of humanity and the shadows of ambition intertwine in a timeless tale of science and survival. This illustrated edition promises not only a captivating reading experience but also a deep dive into the themes and ideas that make H.G. Wells's work a cornerstone of science fiction literature.

Leseprobe

THE

ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU

BY

H. G. WELLS

ABOUT WELLS

H.G. Wells, born Herbert George Wells on September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent, England, became a leading figure in science fiction literature by crafting stories that fused vivid future visions with astute sociological observations. His early experiences with financial hardship shaped his views on social reform, which subsequently found their way into his literary works. Wells, a professional cricket player and shopkeeper's son, apprenticed as a draper due to his family's sporadic financial difficulties; he later wrote about this experience in books such as "Kipps" (1905), which he detested.

Wells used schooling to get free from the grind of retail. After being awarded a scholarship, he studied biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science in London. His fascination with evolutionary theory, a recurring motif in his art, was sparked by this scientific instruction. Though he did not finish his degree, the intellectual environment he was immersed in had a significant impact on his writing and way of thinking.

Launching his career with textbooks and educational articles, Wells's literary trajectory took a decisive turn with the publication of "The Time Machine" in 1895. This work not only established him as a leading writer but also introduced readers to the concept of time travel through scientific means, a novel idea at the time. Wells's ability to fuse scientific concepts with adventurous storytelling marked a new era in literature, where science fiction emerged as a serious genre.

After "The Time Machine" became a hit, Wells authored many more books that are now considered classics: "The First Men in the Moon" (1901), "The War of the Worlds" (1898), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896), and "The Invisible Man" (1897).These books, which are renowned for their imaginative leaps and speculative science, also highlight Wells's concern for the state of humanity and the dualistic potential of technological advancements that could bring about both progress and destruction.

Beyond his science fiction, Wells was a prolific writer in various genres, including social novels, history, and social commentary. His later works, such as "The Outline of History" (1920), demonstrate his enduring interest in social and scientific progress, envisioning a world united in knowledge and freed from the constraints of ignorance and war.

Wells's engagement with the social and political issues of his time, including women's rights, education reform, and global governance, distinguished him from his contemporaries. He was an outspoken socialist, and his writings often included critiques of Victorian society, advocating for a more equitable and scientifically enlightened world.

Throughout his life, Wells engaged with prominent figures of his time, including fellow writers, politicians, and scientists, contributing to public debates on science, society, and the future of humanity. His vision for a World State, a concept he explored in works like "A Modern Utopia" (1905), reflects his belief in the potential for science and reason to improve the human condition.

Wells's legacy extends beyond his contributions to literature; he is remembered as a visionary who imagined the possibilities and perils of the future with unprecedented clarity. His works continue to inspire and provoke, serving as a testament to his belief in the transformative power of human imagination and the critical role of science in shaping a better world. H.G. Wells passed away on August 13, 1946, but his ideas and stories remain influential, illustrating the enduring appeal of speculative fiction as a lens through which to examine our world and its potential futures.

SUMMARY

"The Island of Doctor Moreau," penned by the visionary H.G. Wells, is a riveting tale of science, ethics, and the boundaries of human nature. Set on a remote island, the story unfolds through the eyes of Edward Prendick, a shipwreck survivor who encounters the enigmatic Doctor Moreau. Moreau, a scientist of unparalleled genius and questionable morality, has exiled himself to conduct experiments far beyond the understanding and ethics of conventional society. His work? The vivisection and genetic modification of animals in an attempt to reshape them into human-like beings, an endeavor that blurs the lines between man and beast.

As Prendick navigates the mysteries of the island, he is confronted with the grotesque outcomes of Moreau's experiments: creatures that walk, talk, and resemble humans, yet harbor the instincts of the animals they once were. The island becomes a stage for a profound exploration of the nature of humanity, the ethics of scientific inquiry, and the consequences of playing god.

Wells masterfully crafts a narrative that is as thought-provoking as it is thrilling, making "The Island of Doctor Moreau" not just a story of adventure and horror, but a poignant commentary on the human condition. The novel challenges readers to consider the limits of scientific exploration and the moral responsibilities of those who seek to push those boundaries. In its pages, we find a timeless meditation on identity, civilization, and the savage undercurrents that lurk within both man and beast.

Engaging from start to finish, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" is a classic of science fiction that captivates the imagination while posing enduring questions about science, society, and the essence of humanity itself.

CHARACTERS LIST

This book is a small but interesting ensemble of characters that each bring nuance and complexity to the story's examination of science, morality, and human nature. A list of the key characters is as follows:

Edward Prendick-Prendick, the story's protagonist and narrator, is an Englishman who, after being saved at sea, ends up stuck on the enigmatic island where Dr. Moreau carries out his experiments. Readers see the horrors and moral quandaries that Moreau presents via his eyes.

Doctor Moreau - A brilliant but ethically questionable scientist who has been ostracized from the scientific community for his radical experiments. On his secluded island, Moreau conducts vivisection and genetic modification on animals, attempting to transform them into human-like beings, known as the Beast Folk.

Montgomery - Moreau's assistant, who also serves as the ship's doctor that rescues Prendick. Montgomery is a complex character, showing both compassion for the Beast Folk and loyalty to Moreau. His relationship with the creatures and his own vices play a significant role in the dynamics of the island.

M'ling - Montgomery's servant, who is one of Moreau's creations. M'ling is more animalistic than some of the other Beast Folk but is devoted to Montgomery. His character raises questions about loyalty and the nature of humanity.

The Sayer of the Law - A prominent figure among the Beast Folk, the Sayer of the Law serves as a priest-like entity, reciting the rules imposed by Moreau to maintain order and suppress the animals' natural instincts. This character embodies the conflict between nature and nurture, civilization and savagery.

The Beast Folk - The creations of Doctor Moreau, these beings are the result of his experiments in transforming animals into human-like forms. They include a variety of creatures, each with their unique traits and struggles, representing the spectrum between animal instinct and learned human behavior.

The Ape-Man - One of the more intelligent of the Beast Folk, the Ape-Man plays a significant role in the events that unfold on the island, highlighting the thin line between human and animal, intelligence and savagery.

The Leopard-Man - Another of Moreau's creations, the Leopard-Man is a symbol of the failure of Moreau's experiments to fully suppress the animalistic instincts within the Beast Folk.

These characters, each in their unique way, contribute to the novel's exploration of themes such as the ethical limits of scientific experimentation, the fluid boundaries between human and animal, and the moral responsibilities of creators towards their creations. Wells's cast serves not only to drive the narrative forward but also to provoke thought on profound philosophical questions.

Contents

Introduction

1. In The Dingey Of The “Lady Vain”

2. The Man Who Was Going Nowhere

3. The Strange Face

4. At The Schooner's Rail

5. The Man Who Had Nowhere To Go

6. The Evil-Looking Boatmen

7. The Locked Door

8. The Crying Of The Puma

9. The Thing In The Forest

10. The Crying Of The Man

11. The Hunting Of The Man

12. The Sayers Of The Law

13. A Parley

14. Doctor Moreau Explains

15. Concerning The Beast Folk

16. How The Beast Folk Taste Blood

17. A Catastrophe

18. The Finding Of Moreau

19. Montgomery's “Bank Holiday.”

20. Alone With The Beast Folk

21. The Reversion Of The Beast Folk

22. The Man Alone

Introduction

ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W.

On January the Fifth, 1888—that is eleven months and four days after—my uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked up in latitude 5° 3′ S. and longitude 101° W. in a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha. He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed among psychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon physical and mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request for publication.

The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5° S. and longitude 105° E., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months. In some way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas (with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my uncle's story.

CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)

1. In The Dingey Of The “Lady Vain”

I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the Lady Vain. As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat Myrtle, and the story of their terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible Medusa case. But I have to add to the published story of the Lady Vain another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hitherto been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men.

But in the first place I must state that there never were four men in the dingey,—the number was three. Constans, who was “seen by the captain to jump into the gig,”1 luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he never came up.

I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I might almost say luckily for himself; for we had only a small breaker of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden had been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster. We thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned (though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They could not have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,—which was not until past midday,—we could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer.

We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with. After the first day we said little to one another, and lay in our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round to him.

I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered to Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife in my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight; and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handed halfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor; but he was the strongest of us and would not abide by it, and attacked Helmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together. They sank like stones. I remember laughing at that, and wondering why I laughed. The laugh caught me suddenly like a thing from without.

I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long, thinking that if I had the strength I would drink sea-water and madden myself to die quickly. And even as I lay there I saw, with no more interest than if it had been a picture, a sail come up towards me over the sky-line. My mind must have been wandering, and yet I remember all that happened, quite distinctly. I remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the horizon with the sail above it danced up and down; but I also remember as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I thought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such a little to catch me in my body.

For an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my head on the thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship, schooner-rigged fore and aft) come up out of the sea. She kept tacking to and fro in a widening compass, for she was sailing dead into the wind. It never entered my head to attempt to attract attention, and I do not remember anything distinctly after the sight of her side until I found myself in a little cabin aft. There's a dim half-memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and of a big round countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with red hair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnected impression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine; but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again. I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth; and that is all.

2. The Man Who Was Going Nowhere

THE cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growling of some large animal. At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his question,—“How do you feel now?”

I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how I had got there. He must have seen the question in my face, for my voice was inaccessible to me.

“You were picked up in a boat, starving. The name on the boat was the Lady Vain, and there were spots of blood on the gunwale.”

At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked like a dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business of the boat came back to me.

“Have some of this,” said he, and gave me a dose of some scarlet stuff, iced.

It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.

“You were in luck,” said he, “to get picked up by a ship with a medical man aboard.” He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of a lisp.

“What ship is this?” I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.

“It's a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never asked where she came from in the beginning,—out of the land of born fools, I guess. I'm a passenger myself, from Arica. The silly ass who owns her,—he's captain too, named Davies,—he's lost his certificate, or something. You know the kind of man,—calls the thing the Ipecacuanha, of all silly, infernal names; though when there's much of a sea without any wind, she certainly acts according.”

(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl and the voice of a human being together. Then another voice, telling some “Heaven-forsaken idiot” to desist.)

“You were nearly dead,” said my interlocutor. “It was a very near thing, indeed. But I've put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm's sore? Injections. You've been insensible for nearly thirty hours.”

I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of dogs.) “Am I eligible for solid food?” I asked.

“Thanks to me,” he said. “Even now the mutton is boiling.”

“Yes,” I said with assurance; “I could eat some mutton.”

“But,” said he with a momentary hesitation, “you know I'm dying to hear of how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn that howling!” I thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.