Welcome to the twenty-sixth of our monthly Mark Steyn Club audio adventures in Tales for Our Time. This latest radio serial, read by yours truly, was prompted by my recent appearance on Fox Nation with my old pal from The Greg Gutfeld Show, Tyrus. It was an animal-themed show - that's to say, weird stories about animals, including one from China about how the Politburo has been experimenting with apes to make them more human... And Tyrus mentioned The Island of Dr Moreau - and the old lightbulb popped in my noggin.
As I discuss in tonight's introduction to our tale, the story was very timely when H G Wells wrote it, during a remarkable burst of creativity in the mid-1890s. At the time, vivisection and the moral questions it raised were much in the news. A century on, we remain squeamish about animal experimentation, but on the other hand are blithely applying Wells' theories on defying biology to ourselves, in the elimination of the sexes and other profound matters.
So this is a topical and timely tale, and I hope Mark Steyn Club members will want to weigh in on the questions it raises. It's also, however, a great adventure, beginning with a shipwreck - and three survivors in a dinghy that's all out of water. If Wells' book is about whether we can raise beasts to be men, it begins with men, desperate and dying and struggling to avoid being reduced to beasts:
The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round to him.
I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered to Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife in my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight; and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handed halfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor; but he was the strongest of us and would not abide by it, and attacked Helmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together. They sank like stones. I remember laughing at that, and wondering why I laughed. The laugh caught me suddenly like a thing from without.
He will not, however, be laughing for long. To hear me read The Island of Dr Moreau, prefaced by my own introduction, please click here and log-in.
As I've emphasized since we launched The Mark Steyn Club almost two years ago, our regular content - all my daily commentary, cultural and geopolitical essays, our weekend movie and music features, SteynPosts and Mark's Mailbox and all the rest - will always be free to everyone around the planet. In fact, every week we now offer more free content than at any point in our sixteen-year history. But we have spent the last couple of years letting Club members in on a few experimental features which we might eventually make more widely available. Tales for Our Time is one such: If you're not a Club member (or you are but you've never partaken of this series) you can hear what you're missing in our first-birthday Tales for Our Times sampler, a 75-minute audio special hosted by me and including excerpts from some of our ripping yarns of the last year - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, John Buchan, Jack London, Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Louis Stevenson. And, if it whets your appetite, you can find the above authors and a dozen more collected here.
I'm truly thrilled to see that our nightly radio serials have proved one of the most popular of our Club extras these last two years. I did do a little professional story-reading a zillion years ago, so, if these fancies tickle you, we may release them as audio books on CD or Audible a ways down the road. But for the moment it's an exclusive bonus for members. If you've enjoyed our monthly Steyn Club radio adventures and you're looking for a present for a fellow fan of classic fiction, I hope you'll consider our special Club Gift Membership. Aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly (such as Wednesday's);
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Priority booking for the second annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise (but hurry - like our maiden voyage, it's almost sold out);
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, including my next tour with Dennis Miller;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to The Island of Dr Moreau but to all the other audio adventures listed below.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, whether you like my reading of this twenty-sixth Tale for Our Time or are anxious to vote it off the island, then feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for Part Two of The Island of Dr Moreau.
For previous Tales for Our Time, click below:
#1: The Tragedy of the Korosko
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#2: The Time Machine
by H G Wells
#3: The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
#4: The Prisoner of Zenda
by Anthony Hope
#5: The Cat That Walked By Himself
by Rudyard Kipling
#6: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
by F Scott Fitzgerald
#7: The Rubber Check
by F Scott Fitzgerald
#8: A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
#9: Plum Duff
by Mark Steyn
#10: To Build a Fire
by Jack London
#11: The Overcoat
by Nikolai Gogol
#12: The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
#13: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
#14: The Man Who Would Be King
by Rudyard Kipling
#15: His Last Bow
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#16: Greenmantle
by John Buchan
#17: Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
#18: The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy
#19: Little Women at Christmas
by Louisa May Alcott
#20: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#21: The Gift of the Magi
by O Henry
#22: Anne of Green Gables: An Unfortunate Lily Maid
by L M Montgomery
#23: With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD
by Rudyard Kipling
#24: As Easy as ABC
by Rudyard Kipling
#25: Notre-Dame de Paris
by Victor Hugo
