Manchester Digital Laboratory

 First published in 1896, The Island of Doctor Moreau was written by legendary author H. G. Wells.

The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates sentient beings from animals via vivisection.

Did We Like It?

Most people finished reading it and liked it. There were criticisms about the science of turning animals into people and the general dreariness of the story.

Is It SciFi?

The science was vague without any real explanation and some of us thought it was more of a horror story than science fiction. Despite these niggles we felt that, yes, it is SciFi. We also thought that The Island of Dr Moreau was a book that has stood the test of time.
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On February the 21st 2012, Manchester SciFi book club met at the Madlab to discuss Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The novel presents a future American society where reading is outlawed and firemen start fires to burn books. Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Bradbury saw as issues in American society of the era.

The novel has been the subject of various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context.

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