Introduction

Abstract

‘Monsters manufactured!’ exclaims Edward Prentick, the unfortunate shipwrecked man in H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau (1894), as soon as he finds out what the doctor has done to the imported animal population on the island where he has been stranded.¹ Moreau is a ‘vivisector’ who tries to modify animals into human beings, using techniques like skin grafting, transplantation of body parts and other methods of inoculation with living and dead tissue. His intervention in the course of evolution is motivated by a firm belief in the perfection of the human race through technological innovation. Doctor Moreau assures his baffled, involuntary guest on the island that he regards himself an emulator of God, since the creator has not been very efficient in his enforcement of evolutionary laws. Depending on the grade of his technology’s perfection, the vivisector thinks he can upgrade and control the island’s animal population. The moral of this story follows from the inevitable punishment of the arrogant scientist, as he gets killed in the uprising of animals.