Science Fiction by Gaslight

The small English town of Iping is just a waystation on the main road to Port Braddock. Nothing ever happens in Iping. Not in the dead of winter with the snow thick and crisp on the ground. Not with the wind howling and the ice crunching underfoot. Not until the Stranger came with his thick dark glasses and his head wrapped in bandages. Not until the Invisible Man arrived.

H G Wells’ The Invisible Man is one of the true classics of science fiction, as frightening and fresh now as it was when it was first written. For there is terror in doors that open with no one behind them, in footsteps in empty halls, in a touch in an empty room. And for Griffin, the Invisible Man, in the discovery of what it is to be both powerful — and powerless.

Moreau, misunderstood and hounded by the London medical community, retreats to a Pacific island to continue his experiments. The goal: Nothing less than to surgically rebuild animals into the shape of men — and to teach them the meaning of humanity.

What is the law? Not to eat flesh or fish, that is the law; are we not men? What is the law? Not to chase other men, that is the law; are we not men?

As castaway Edward Prendick learns, Moreau is a feared, wrathful “god” to his beastmen. And in comparing Moreau to his lumbering, gentle servant M’Ling, it is sometimes difficult to tell which is the man, and which is the beast.

Wells’ classic shocker raises the question of what it means to be human. “Pain… is such a little thing…”

Award winner! – The Mark Time Award –  The Silver Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Production, 1996.