The Island of Doctor Moreau

Edward Prendick, adrift after a shipwreck, is taken to a remote island where the disgraced physiologist Doctor Moreau carries out grotesque experiments. Through vivisection Moreau reshapes animals into stumbling half-human creatures, the Beast Folk, kept in line by a recited Law that holds their instincts at bay. When that fragile order breaks down, Prendick learns how thin the border is between the human and the animal. Published in 1896, H. G. Wells wrote it as a dark parable about science without limits, the ethics of the laboratory, and the beast that survives inside civilized people. Its questions about what we owe the creatures we alter grow sharper with each passing decade. Read it in this free PDF and EPUB edition.