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Study 044 - The Island of Doctor Moreau - Part 4 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-05-25 18:22:33
Edited:
2023-10-06 09:04:23
Imported:
2026-06
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We've raised it up and now we're putting it down! Join us as we conclude The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells!

Special thanks to reader Andrew Leman - check out the goods at The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society!

Next week: Bonus episode on the film adaptations of Moreau.

After that: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter!

Comments

Anna-Elizabeth

"Are we not to Fake It until We Make It?"

Anna-Elizabeth

I had a neighbor describe me - in my presence - as "a Lone Tiger". I do value solitude, I enjoy my hobbies, I walk most days, I just do my thing. I think I am an introvert with good social skills, sometimes I enjoy clubbing or whatever, but I don't crave the company of others. I really enjoyed this study. I do think H.G. Wells remains very relevant in our times. I appreciate the reference to Penn Jillette, I would agree that while I do as I please, I have no desire to cause harm or commit crimes, and I do not need a religion to prevent me from harming others. Two years ago, a doctor called me "remarkably courteous", but I acted towards him no differently than with any other person. I lead with courtesy and I want to be nice, if one meets me with a similar attitude then everything will be fine. I have a low tolerance for fools and would-be bullies and abusers, however.

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

Really enjoyed the conclusion to your coverage of The Island of Dr. Moreau and look forward to some future segment when you complete your H.G. Wells tetralogy by covering War of the Worlds - though a part of me wants you to also cover Food of the Gods too. If you ever choose to return to the themes explored in Dr. Moreau I would recommend a couple of similar works that were certainly inspired by Wells' novella. One is Manly Wade Wellman's "Pithecanthropus Rejectus" (1937) which anticipates some of the ideas seen in the recent Planet of the Apes films, as well as L. Sprague de Camp's "The Command" (1938) about a black bear who undergoes a chemical treatment that raises his intelligence to human-levels. I don't believe you've cover de Camp yet on either show and he really is a great writer who is underappreciated today due to his penchant for writing Conan pastiches in his 40s which damaged his reputation. Also Chad's joke about Tim Burton using real ape-men in his Planet of the Apes film reminded me of "The Happiest Hell on Earth" (2010), a short story by Cody Goodfellow and John Skipp where Moreau doesn't die but instead goes into show business with his manimals and eventually becoming this universe's version of Walt Disney. However the one that I think you guys would both find really interesting is a series of stories that actually pre-dates The Island of Dr. Moreau and that's Charles Dickens' The Mudfog Papers (1837-38). This is a sequence of seven short stories presented as a series of reports dispatched from the fictional town of Mudfog, which is essentially what would happen if you had a town whose entire city council was composed of a group of Dr. Moreau-like Mad Scientists. In each report we learn about the latest experiments being carried out by The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything. These include the Moreau-like vivisection of a dog (told from the dog's POV) to the creation of West World-type robots which people can pay to abuse for pleasure. They are wonderfully weird stories and it's interesting to imagine what kind of writer Dickens would have turned out to be had The Mudfog Papers been a success instead of Oliver Twist.

Randolph Pickman Carter

I think Ricky Gervais covered the god question “ if there is no god why aren’t you murdering as much as you want?” “ I am, Which is not at all “ I don’t not murder just because I’m scared of gods wrath. Oh if anyone needs another accurate retelling of this story look up the mighty boosh “mutants” from series 1

Mara Rhymes with Sara

If you're going to cover the film adaptations there's an absolutely must see documentary about the making of the Val Kilmer film about the bonkers behind the scenes shenanigans that went on during the making of that film. It's called "Lost Soul," and it is a wild ride

Jim Cannon

This was so utterly bleak and horrifying. Wells manages to make the beast people both sympathetic and terrifying at the same time, and Prendick ends up with acute PTSD after all of his trauma. I enjoyed it a lot - well, you know what I mean.

Illegal_Structures

To be honest, I’ve always dismissed Wells as a purveyor of simple boys’ proto-pulp yarns, but based on your coverage of “Moreau” I can see that he had much more to offer. I was shocked (and intrigued) to hear just how depressing and gross this novel actually is; and how it partakes in the early weird-fiction tradition. In fact, I wonder if it might owe a debt to Machen’s “Great God Pan”, which came out a few years earlier (to “Moreau”) and caused a sensation with its treatment of unspeakable transformations. As you mentioned in an old HPLLP episode, Wells and Machen were hired to contribute stories to a short-lived publication called The Unicorn; although none of their stories appeared together in print, doubtless they were aware of each other’s work. It’s curious to consider what kind of cross-pollination have taken place between Machen and Wells, especially since they are rarely mentioned together (at least as far as I’m aware). Perhaps in the future you will consider covering Machen’s “The Terror”, which has a reportage style and scientific sensibility similar to Wells’? Keep up the great work, lads.

Jack Saul

I read this book when I was 12 and although I remembered very little of the plot the listen through has really brought back to me how it made me feel at the time- I remember having a real revelation at what horror there is in corporeality- that we and the animals are these fleshy, brutal, vulnerable things....Not long after I bought the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game....and here I am.

Jim Cannon

Weird resonances. Saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 today. Out for a walk, up to ep 498 in my current re-listen and _Island of Doctor Moreau_ comes up because of Richard Stanley. Coincidence? Most likely!

David Halstead

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Samuel Johnson (from 1809) I think Wells may have been referencing this famous quote.

Wulf Mungus

For any comic fans, there is an adaptation from IDW featuring art by Gabriel Rodriguez. (of Locke and Key) Great lookin book, but they made some interesting choices. For one, Prendick is female.. and 2, they never leave the island and return to society. The who thing is only 2 issues. Which makes the trade version kinda funny. In order to help pad it out. They printed Rodriguez's pencil pages.. effectively printing the story twice

Ethan Cordray

These were great episodes. They reminded me of how creepy this book made me feel when I read it, many years ago. I think it's truly one of the greatest works of horror ever written. Your recaps made me notice the cosmicism in Dr. Moreau a lot more than I remembered. Out of curiosity, I looked up H.G. Wells in Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature, and I was surprised that HPL doesn't mention this novel at all -- I suppose because it's not technically "supernatural" (that didn't stop him from talking about Frankenstein, but whatever). I think that Wells echoes Lovecraft's cosmic themes quite closely in the descriptions of Prendick's eventual alienation from humanity, and in Moreau's grandiose sense of connection to a cruel and indifferent divinity. The beast-men also resemble some of the animalistic-humanoid monsters in Lovecraft, like ghouls and Deep Ones. However, Wells never embraced a Lovecraftian sense of pessimism, remaining optimistic about human progress throughout his writing career (in rather troublingly authoritarian ways, later on). Wells may have intended this novel to be a "blasphemous" criticism of religion and civilization in light of Darwinian science, which it most certainly is, but I think he doesn't quite plunge all the way into the anti-humanist abyss at which the novel points. I guess if I want that sort of thing, I need to just go with HPL or Thomas Ligotti.

Erik Jordan Phillips

This conclusion felt like if Brian from Hatch came back to civilization and instead of gaining a new appreciation for food he became irrationally fearful of Canadians

Jason Thompson

I used to love that Penn & Teller quote about religion but I love it less lately so here is my contrary take. I think the idea that quote-unquote “normal” people would never do horrible things is a little too comforting and not entirely true. I think most people have some level of antisocial urges and we restrain them, either from empathy (“I can’t do that to another person”) or fear of punishment (“If I post that on Twitter, I’ll lose my job.”) in either case, self-control keeps people from making the impulsive choice, and when self-control is impaired, whether from drugs and alcohol or mental illness, people’s moral boundaries are eroded. I get what Teller is mocking in the original quote, the equally bad idea that “only religion keeps us from savagery”, but today it feels a little smug to me to proclaim that I, and other cool people, am naturally good and anyone who does bad things is naturally evil. The world is complicated and the urge to draw a clear line between goodies and baddies can, itself, lead to bad places.

Mark K

Thanks for covering this! I read this way back in junior high and parts--like the horror of the now quieter, but fully human, moaning from the "House of Pain"--have stuck with me. Rereading it along with the pod I had questions that never would have occurred to me back then. One was the tie in to colonial exploitation; the language of uneducated beast-men for indigenes is so common it seems hard to ignore, but it's such a hateful metaphor I hope Wells didn't mean it that way. Even if it's clear Moreau was the real monster all along. I was also thinking about the significance of Moreau thinking cats, including a panther, would make good subjects. How would a solitary creature like that ever adapt to a society? Why not a social creature like a dog? But it's a perfect mistake for Moreau, who imagined himself as a superman apart from the rest of humanity, and happy to live alone. It's fitting the thing killed him.

David Halstead

H. G. Wells has many literary descendants for his other stories, with countless works featuring time travel, alien invasions, and invisibility, but what about Moreau? I thought about this for a while and the best thing I could come up with was Planet of the Apes. So I picked up and read the novel by Pierre Boulle, and it was very interesting. Much different from the movie adaptation, and more in line with Moreau with men becoming animals and animals becoming men. It even has a discussion on Artificial Intelligence which sounds just like issues people are talking about today. I feel confident in recommending it as a book to consider covering on the show.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I very much enjoyed the shows, gentlemen. I am most annoyed by Wells' devolution device. A real missed opportunity to explore how these new beings might have the ability to improve themselves rather than revert without the ministrations of Moreau. Might they not be just as capable as we? Perhaps more so. More moral. More giving. I would have loved most of all if their new society cast out Prendick - his backward ways incapable of fitting in. And since we only have Prendick's word for what happened . . . perhaps I'll just decide for myself that's exactly what did.

Robby H.

As the novel comes to a close, I want to say that I'm glad you guys covered it. You guys have either referenced it, or talked about covering it for years now. My only complaint about this novel is the mad scientist with a God-complex trope. Moreau is basically seen as a god by his creations, and a proto-religion does pop up after his death. This could just be my irritation at the Guardian of the Galaxy 3, where the main antagonist is trying to "evolve" animals and he yells out at one point "There is no God!" Like why does every evil scientist need to be an evolutionary-obsessed atheist who thinks s/he's a god or the next best thing? Sorry for my little diatribe. It's just one of those things that get under my skin.

Doc Singles

After Part 3 I bought and read this book, which is like distilled existential horror! The day after I finished it I happen to watch the Episode of the Venture Bros where the beast men escape their mad scientist creators and form a Marxist revolutionary group in the tropics called U.R.G.H. (United Repressed Grotesque Humanity). Fitting, considering Wells was a staunch socialist.

Z.A. Kahan

I was always a fan of the British Government recruiting Moreau for their own nefarious purposes during the events of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. II. Moore was definitely having fun pitting Wells' creations against each other. Interestingly, P-Dicky appears briefly, and is frightened meeting Mina Murray, as her eyes remind him of the hybrids. The best bit of course, is that the British Government relocates Moreau to the Hundred Acre Wood, and many of his New Hybrids are implied to be the origins of more modern "funny animal" characters, such as Rupert the Bear, Mister Toad, Tiger Tim, etc.

Joseph Dawson

Religion isn't a mechanism to discourage bad behavior (principally) - though people can and do do that. "For the holy there are no laws" - Sefer Ha-Aggadah. Also look at what Timothy 1:9 has to say. Rather, Religion accounts for the "why" part of the proposition given that God is the very nature of Being itself with Religion being that part which seeks to repair that which has been broken (imp of the perverse? - Sorry, I Poe is my guy...) Plato's Ring of Gyges comes to mind here as well - a man when turned on his head (the passions/tendencies etc) must be set to rights (the intellect/metaphysical considerations). Now, if the atheist or the bulk of the population does not wish to rape and murder, this still has more to do with inclination, social norms, expectation, atavistic tendencies, the self as final authority and what not but does not in any way satisfy the question as to why it is wrong to do so in principle. (Think along the lines of transcendental realities like Beauty, truth, goodness, unity, etc.) One has to account for things rather than appeal to how agreeable a proposition may or may not be. Anyhow, this is the briefest of comments on the weightiest of issues and it certainly one worth taking very seriously.