Abstract
This chapter analyzes how two of H. G. Wells’s island stories, “Aepyornis Island” from The Stolen Bacillus (1894), and The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), expose the extirpative consequences of human, animal, and plant colonization in the context of the British Empire. In both texts, humans, human-animal hybrids, previously extinct and non-native species colonize island locations, dramatically transforming their ecological structures. These new nightmare environments allow evolutionarily “inferior” creatures such as the extinct Aepyornis and medically manufactured Beast People to threaten human domination. Reading Wells’s fiction as examples of anti-Robinsonades that are grounded in the realities of Victorian colonial expansion, and in dialogue with scientific writings by Wells and Charles Darwin, this chapter shows how Wells questions scientific and imperialist narratives of development by presenting extinction as a possibility for all forms of life.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Alt, Christina, “Extinction, Extermination, and the Ecological Optimism of H. G. Wells.” Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson. Wesleyan UP, 2014, pp. 25–39.
Anderson, Thomas J. “Aepyornis as Moa: Giant Birds and Global Connections in Nineteenth-Century Science.” British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 46, no. 4, 2013, pp. 675–93.
Anker, Peder. Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945. Harvard UP, 2001.
Cantor, Paul A., and Peter Hufnagel. “The Empire of the Future: Imperialism and Modernism in H. G. Wells.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 38, no. 1, 2006, pp. 36–56.
Choi, Yoonjoung. “‘Jokes and Drink’: Bakhtinian Carnivalism in Wells’s Aepyornis Island and Jimmy Goggles the God.” The Explicator, vol. 71, no. 3, 2013, pp. 191–4.
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 2004.
Cuvier, Georges. “Mémoire sur les épèces d’elephans tant vivantes que fossils, lu à la séance publique de l’Institut National le 15 germinal, an IV.” Magasin encyclopédique, 2e anée, 1796, pp. 440–5.
———. “Sur le Megatherium, autre animal de la famille des paresseux, mais de la taille du rhinocéros, dont un squelette fossile presque complet est conservé au cabinet royal d’Histoire naturelle à Madrid.” Annales du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 1804, pp. 376–87.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 1. John Murray, 1871.
———. Journals and Remarks: 1832–1836. vol. 3. Henry Colburn, 1839.
———. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. John Murray, 1859.
Dawson, Gowan. “Literary Megatheriums and Loose Baggy Monsters: Paleontology and the Victorian Novel.” Victorian Studies, vol. 53, no. 2, 2011, pp. 203–30.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Oxford UP, 2008.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. U of Hawaii P, 2007.
Drake, Donald R., and Terry L. Hunt. “Invasive Rodents on Islands: Integrating Historical and Contemporary Ecology.” Biological Invasions, vol. 11, 2009, pp. 1483–87.
Edmond, Rod, and Vanessa Smith. “Editors’ Introduction.” Islands in History and Representation, edited by Edmond and Smith. Routledge, 2003, pp. 1–18.
Glendening, John. “‘Green Confusion’: Evolution and Entanglement in Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau.” The Evolutionary Imagination in Late-Victorian Novels: An Entangled Bank. Ashgate, 2007, pp. 39–68.
Gold, Barri J. “Reproducing Empire: Moreau and Others.” Nineteenth Century Studies, vol. 14, 2000, pp. 173–98.
Hammond, J. R. H. G. Wells and the Short Story. St. Martin’s, 1992.
Kemp, Peter. H. G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Imperatives and Imaginative Obsessions. Palgrave, 1996.
Kerslake, Patricia. “Moments of Empire: Perceptions of Kurd Lasswitz and H. G. Wells.” Wellsian, vol. 25, 2002, pp. 25–38.
Lee, Michael Parrish. “Reading Meat in H. G. Wells.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 42, no. 3, 2010, pp. 249–68.
McConnell, Frank. The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells. Cambridge UP, 1981.
McLean, Steven. The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Miller, John. Empire and the Animal Body: Violence, Identity and Ecology in Victorian Adventure Fiction. Anthem, 2014.
Parrinder, Patrick. Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy. Liverpool UP, 1995.
Rieder, John. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Wesleyan UP, 2008.
Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Harvard UP, 1987.
Rohman, Carrie. “Burning Out the Animal: The Failure of Enlightenment Purification in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.” Figuring Animals: Essays on Animal Images in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Popular Culture, edited by Mary Sanders Pollock and Catherine Rainwater. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 121–34.
Russell, Israel Cook. “The Giant Birds of New Zealand.” American Naturalist, vol. 11, 1877, pp. 11–21.
Taneja, Payal. “The Tropical Empire: Exotic Animals and Beastly Men in The Island of Doctor Moreau.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 39, no. 2–3, 2013, pp. 139–59.
Turvey, Samuel T. “In the Shadow of the Megafauna: Prehistoric Mammal and Bird Extinctions Across the Holocene.” Holocene Extinctions, edited by Samuel T. Turvey. Oxford UP, 2009, pp. 17–40.
Wells, H. G. “The Extinction of Man.” Pall Mall Gazette, 25 September 1894, p. 3, reprinted in Certain Personal Matters, Lawrence and Bullen, 1898, pp. 172–9.
———. “Human Evolution, an Artificial Process.” Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1896, pp. 590–5, reprinted in H. G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction, edited by Robert M. Philmus and David Y. Hughes. U of California P, 1975, pp. 211–19.
———. The Island of Doctor Moreau. Penguin, 2005.
———. Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. Waterlow and Sons, 1933.
———. “On Extinction.” Chambers Journal, vol. 10, 10 Sep. 1893, 623–4, reprinted in H. G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction, edited by Robert M. Philmus and David Y. Hughes. U of California P, 1975, pp. 169–72.
———. The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents. Ernest Benn, 1926.
———. The Time Machine. Penguin, 2005.
———. Tono-Bungay. Penguin, 2005.
———. The War of the Worlds. Everyman, 2001.
———. “Zoological Retrogression.” Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 271, Sep. 1891, pp. 246–53, reprinted in H. G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction, edited by Robert M. Philmus and David Y. Hughes. U of California P, 1975, pp.158–68.
Wells, H. G., Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells. The Science of Life. Cassell and Company, 1938.
Whittle, Matthew. “Lost Trophies: Hunting Animals and the Imperial Souvenir in Walton Ford’s Pancha Tantra.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 196–210.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ong, J.M. (2019). Imperial Ecologies and Extinction in H. G. Wells’s Island Stories. In: Mazzeno, L., Morrison, R. (eds) Victorian Environmental Nightmares. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14042-7_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14042-7_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14041-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14042-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)