Dystopian Overload.

I've been very lacking in terms of this blog over the last few weeks, so I'm sorry for that! I seem to have no problem wasting my time away from the computer but every time I am on here I feel guilty for blogging when I have so much work to be getting on with! I'm in the process of writing a script for my final (!) Uni project right now so although I am reading a lot, it's either textbooks/pdf's on scriptwriting or a few chapters/pages at a time from several books.

See, I've decided where I want to take this script is into dystopia, and because I've never written anything like that before, I'm researching quite a bit. The writing process/story and characters are fine, I know I can write well and can form good characters but adding such an important setting and background and having it be basically a character in its self is a little daunting. I'm pretty much going dystopia-crazy trying to research.

So far I'm looking at:

The Long Walk
Cloud Atlas
Mockingjay
The Children Of Men
The Handmaid's Tale
Lord Of The Flies
1984
Hey Nostradamus
The Road

But if any of you have any suggestions that you think might be helpful, (books, films, radio plays...anything) then please let me know in the comments I'd really appreciate it!

The Island Of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells

I'm sure the story of this book is known vaguely by a lot of people, at least I had some knowledge of it prior to picking it up, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until I read a review on a book called The Madman's Daughter a few weeks ago.

The Madman's Daughter is a sequel of sorts to Moreau, though penned by a different author, it tells the story of Moreau's daughter and her quest to find her father. The review made it sound like such a great read, but I thought I had better start off with the original, which I've just finished.

Without saying too much, The Island...is the story of Pendrick, a man who survives a shipwreck and is saved by another boat, only to be thrown from that one when it makes it's next stop to allow fellow traveller Montgomery to disembark to an island.
On this island, Montgomery introduces Pendrick to a Dr. Moreau, a secretive man, and they decide Pendrick will have to stay, as boats do not often pass by them.
Pendrick is unable to leave the mysterious of the island alone, he is too curious and oddly disgusted by the other inhabitants of the island, dark faced people with strange gaits, and what is all that screaming coming from Moreau's "room"...

As I've said I already had some vague ideas as to what the book was about, and because of that the pulp of the story was not a surprise to me. I think these kind of stories, especially by Wells, rely on that shock factor, that moment where the audience and the protagonist's thoughts align as they come to the big realisation of the story together, but I missed out on that having already known or guessed what the inhabitants of the island were.

Saying that though, the writing and the pace are fantastic, and the amount of mystery, and wells decision to unveil slowly rather than one big "Ta Da!" in the climax works really well and balances the story on a precipice  so that even in the last few pages, you're wondering if something's going to change to tip the story the other way.

I'm not a big sci-fi reader really, but I'm embarking on the challenge of writing a dystopian script right now so I felt this book could only help!

Have you read this book, or it's "sequel"? What did you think?