Durante un viaje de regreso del espacio, y presumiblemente como resultado de un sabotaje, una nave espacial cae del espacio y en suúnico superviviente llega a una isla perdida en el océano presidida por una enorme M. Poco a poco, el protagonista de la novela. Shaw, descubre que en ella Mortimer Darts, una víctima de la talidomida fascinada por las deformidades humanas, ha llevado a cabo unos experimentos en la misma línea que los del legendario doctor Moreau.

Really bad. Like Island of Dr. Moreau with Marlon Brando bad. ( )

This is the third in the author's monster trilogy, this one being based on a less well known work of classic horror than Frankenstein or Dracula, namely H G Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. In the near future of 1996 (this was published in 1982), the superpowers are at war, with the USA and China facing off against the Soviet Union. A senior US official is the sole survivor of a plane crash who ends up on a Pacific island populated by apparent savages. These are the descendants of the real life half-human, half-animal creatures on which Wells supposedly based his novel. In this instance, the genetic horrors are perpetrated by an embittered survivor of the real life drug thalidomide, that caused limb loss and other deformities to babies of mothers who took the drug in the later 1950s/early 1960s. Despite this horribly realistic scenario, I thought it was the weakest of the three novels, and I found the characters and whole situation rather unrealistic even on their own terms. In fact, the book is not even really part of a trilogy as the characters and backdrop are entirely different from those in the other two, and much less sympathetic. Disappointing. ( )

My reaction to reading this novel in 1996. Spoilers follow.

Sort of a sequel to H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. The founding conceit here is that there really was a Moreau or, rather MacMoreau who conducted vivisection experiments fictionalized by Wells. Aldiss brings the story forward to 1996 and keeps much the same plot: a shipwrecked (or rather spacewrecked) man lands on the island, is horrified by the experiments being conducted on beasts, and eventually watches the whole set up come crashing down.

However, narrator Edward Prendick of Wells’ novel is rather – in the world at large – insignificant. Aldiss’ narrator, Calvert Roberts, is an ambitious, self-important, rather pompous Undersecretary of State for the U.S. (Oddly, though his primary job is as negotiator, he is unable to reconcile the Beast People and Dart.) Moreau is a rather physically strong, imposing figure. Aldiss’ island is ruled over by Mortimer Dart, a man maimed by fetal exposure to thalidomide. Like Moreau, he has set himself up as a god over the Beast People (descendants of MacMoreau’s experimental subjects), and he gives the law to them in catchy rock tunes reminiscent of Moreau’s Law chants.

Dart is interested in the effects of form and attitude on behavior (the plasticity of flesh like Moreau). He sees himself as a victim though he is just as tyrannical as Moreau and experiments on human fetus’ to create Seal People. Like Wells’ novel, this book is concerned with animal and human nature. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, the narrator tries, at first, to see a sharp distinction between then realizes much of the animal remains in man. In this novel, the narrator realizes there is a continuum of animal to human nature. Aldiss, however, is unwilling to indict the animal nature as evil. When Calvert lives for four days with the Seal People, he looks back on the experience – complete with sexual unions with the genetically human but bestially formed Seal People and a four year old – with pleasure and no shame. The sensual Heather the narrator views as being corrupted by civilization.

As nuclear war is looming outside this island and eventually breaks out, the increasingly human (led by the clever Foxy) Beast People destroy the human presence on the island as they become more human – and are killed by the rescuers of Dart. The book’s theme is that instinct (the animal virtue as embodied in the Seal People) must be alloyed with Reason (as epitomized by science and Dart’s playing of Haydn).

I’m not sure I believe in the validity of this appeal to the virtues of the animal – civilization seems to work best channeling and controlling these impulses, but that seems the book’s conclusion. ( )

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