A shipwreck survivor narrates this novel about a remote island where a doctor experiments on animals. The island's strange inhabitants recite a Law that forbids them from behaving like beasts.
162 pages 3h 8m reading time
One of the founding works of science fiction, and an early classic about the dangers of science without limits.
Imagines a scientist who uses surgery to turn animals into human-like creatures, and asks whether pain and cruelty can ever be justified in the name of knowledge.
Suggests that the line between human and animal is thin, and that the rules people live by may only cover over instincts they never lose.
Took part in the heated public argument of its time over vivisection (cutting open live animals for research), and is still cited in debates about animal testing.
Gave later writers and filmmakers a model for stories about creating or changing living beings, and has been adapted for film several times, including "Island of Lost Souls" (1932).
Sparked by a scandal
Wells said a famous 1895 trial, widely taken to be Oscar Wilde's, helped inspire the story.
Grew from an essay
A year earlier, Wells wrote an essay arguing that surgery might reshape an animal's body and even its mind.
Critics were disgusted
Many first reviewers called the novel horrible and gruesome, and some called it an insult to religion.
The author's own verdict
Looking back years later, Wells called the book "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."
H. G. Wells 1896 
