{"id":5736,"date":"2022-09-30T22:28:37","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T22:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5736"},"modified":"2022-09-30T22:30:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T22:30:24","slug":"the-album-of-dr-moreau-by-daryl-gregory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5736","title":{"rendered":"The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Album of Dr. Moreau <\/em><\/strong>by Daryl Gregory (Tor Novellas, 2021)1<\/sup> opens with Bobby, a human-ocelot hybrid and one of the members of the boy band WyldBoyz, waking up after a huge after-tour drink and drug taking binge to find his manager, Dr M., lying beside him in bed. He has been brutally murdered and Bobby is covered in blood.
Bobby goes to get hold of the rest of the band members, who are also human-animal hybrids, and they assemble in Bobby\u2019s room to examine the body and discuss what they are going to do. During this they talk about what happened the previous night and also allude to matters that they must not mention to the police.
At the end of this section Bobby says, \u201cI\u2019m going to need a really good publicist\u201d. This, and an earlier hopeful comment, \u201cPlease don\u2019t be a dead hooker\u201d, are the first glimmerings that this is going to be an overtly humorous piece (I didn\u2019t realise for sure until further on in the story).
After this set-up the point of view switches to Detective Lucia Delgado, who is assigned to the case with her partner detective Banks. Co-incidentally, Delgado has a daughter interested in the band:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Melanie] was nine years old\u2014dead center in the band\u2019s demographic sweet spot of preteen females\u2014and a huge fan. A poster of the band\u2014the one where they\u2019re wearing space suits from the Unleashed<\/em> album\u2014hung over her bed. Luce knew the names of every member of the band, because Melanie talked about them as if they were her personal friends. Devin, \u201cthe romantic one,\u201d was three-quarters bonobo; Tim, \u201cthe shy one,\u201d was a large percentage of pangolin; Matt, \u201cthe funny one,\u201d was a giant bat; and Tusk, \u201cthe smart one,\u201d was a hybrid elephant. Last but by no means least in the heart of Luce\u2019s daughter (and on the LVMPD person-of-interest list) was \u201cthe cute one,\u201d Bobby O.
Next to her mirror Melanie had pinned up a Tiger Beat<\/em> cover filled with Bobby O\u2019s face. The headline read: \u201cO Is for Ocelot! We Luv a Lot!\u201d And indeed, Melanie adored<\/em> him. Last week Luce was feeling bad she hadn\u2019t ponied up the $38.50 a ticket for the WyldBoyZ show at the Matador. She had zero interest in watching a bunch of genetically engineered manimals sing and dance like some Chuck E. Cheese nightmare, but Melanie would have lost her mind with joy. Now Luce was grateful she\u2019d skipped.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the story sees Delgado and Banks investigate the murder and interview the members one at time (we get these interviews from Delgado\u2019s point of view, and then a chapter from the band member\u2019s point of view\u2014which sometimes varies significantly from what they have told Delgado).
Sequentially, we see: (a) Bobby remembering a huge argument between the band and Dr M. about the imminent break-up of the group; (b) Devin revealing that he and Tusk created the songs (lyrics and music respectively) but that Dr M. owned the rights; (c) Tusk telling the detectives about the band\u2019s escape from a barge that went on fire; (d) Luce and Banks finding a costume and the murder weapon in the toilets after watching a security video; and (e) Tim (the pangolin-hybrid) worrying about shell cancer and giving the detectives a one-page lecture on pop-song construction (an atypically dull section in the story2<\/sup>).
During this latter interview we also get the band\u2019s origin story when Tim reveals that, after a fire on an illegal floating laboratory where they were experimental subjects, they drifted on a life-raft in the Pacific for two weeks before being rescued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fishermen towed them east for two days and cut them loose at Isla Isabella. \u201cOh my God,\u201d Matt had said. \u201cWe\u2019re in the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands. This is where Darwin figured out evolution.\u201d
\u201cWhy are you laughing?\u201d Tim asked.
\u201cBecause a hundred years ago, we could have fucked his shit up.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We also learn that when the group finally got to mainland Peru they met Dr M. and Kat, their roadie (who Luce later discovers is pregnant).
Although this has the structure of a mystery story, a lot of it is played for laughs (Luce\u2019s partner Banks has a stream of puns and one liners, e.g., \u201cI\u2019m sure we can get the pangolin to come out of his shell\u201d), and hits peak humour when Luce interviews two members of the fan-club, who are as deranged and pedantic as you would expect\u2014they explain in depth the differences between the two fan types that are \u201czoomies\u201d and \u201czoomandos\u201d. We also go beyond puns, one-liners and amusing scenes to metafictional humour in Matt\u2019s interview, when he reels off a list of murder mystery writers and their asides to readers about the stories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hate metafiction,\u201d Delgado said.
Banks said, \u201cA couple hours ago she was telling me we\u2019re either in a locked-room mystery or a science fiction story. She said she really doesn\u2019t want to be in sci-fi.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A little while after this interview, Luce announces to Banks that she knows who committed the murder. Then, after a few more puzzle pieces are presented\u2014there is a interview with Dr M.\u2019s wife, the recovery of a missing laptop, and a short conversation with her Captain and two men who are supposedly \u201cFish and Wildlife\u201d agents (and who who have a photograph of someone who looks like Kat\u2019s twin brother)\u2014Delgado discovers the laptop files include a capella<\/em> versions of the band\u2019s songs and a list of the subjects at the floating lab. She notes that all of them were terminated apart from the band members and the original experimental subject.
The climactic scene of the story (spoiler) sees the band flee the hotel (much to the chagrin of the two agents) but they later turn up at Delgado\u2019s house. She tells them how she thinks the murder was committed (she thinks Matt is the murderer, if I recall correctly), and then the band tell her what actually occurred: Matt glided\/bungee-jumped onto Dr M.\u2019s balcony and opened the door so the rest of the band members and Kat could enter. They searched the room for the laptop and its incriminating information, and then Kat killed Dr M. to prevent him revealing the band\u2019s secrets, mutilating his body to make it look like a deranged fan did it. Finally, we learn (a) Kat is the mother of all the WyldBoyz\u2014she is the original protean subject on the list (I presume \u201cprotean\u201d in this case means that she is able to give birth to various types of life), and (b) the Feds are closing in (the Fish and Wildlife guys actually work for a much more sinister department, the one that detained Kat during WWII and repeatedly made her give birth3<\/sup>). Also, during all this back and forth, Delgado\u2019s daughter Melanie comes through briefly and ends up singing with her favourite band (this will no doubt be the finale in the musical of the story).
Overall this is an enjoyable read and one that is quite funny in places\u2014as well as Banks\u2019s puns, there are numerous amusing exchanges and scenes, mostly about boy bands, animals and their habits, and, as already mentioned, fans. There are also a lot of throwaway references to pre-2000 music, e.g. when the lack of a female band member comes up, one of them says \u201cWe\u2019re not The Cure\u201d\u2014presumably a joke at the expense of the singer Robert Smith; also, when Dr M. forms the band in Peru, The Animals is discounted as a name.
I note that most of the humour is in the middle part of the story as, at the beginning and end, the mystery requirements are prioritised. And, while we are talking about the murder mystery aspects, I doubt that anyone could figure out the circumstances of the murder from the clues that are presented. The story is also a bit longer than it needs to be (it\u2019s a very long novella), and there is no convincing explanation as to why the Feds, having let them remain free for so long, suddenly become interested in them at the end of the story.
*** (Good). 37,750 words. Purchase link<\/a>.

1. This was a finalist for the 2022 Theodore Sturgeon Award.

2. The Apologies<\/em> section at the end of the book reveals the song construction lecture comes from Gregory\u2019s son, \u201cI asked my second born, Ian Gregory, to write the first draft of Tim\u2019s impassioned defense of pop music, and they gave me the perfect rant.\u201d

3. It becomes obvious at this point in the story that Kat is a survivor from The Island of Dr Moreau<\/em>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory (Tor Novellas, 2021)1 opens with Bobby, a human-ocelot hybrid and one of the members of the boy band WyldBoyz, waking up after a huge after-tour drink and drug taking binge to find his manager, Dr M., lying beside him in bed. He has been brutally murdered and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1324],"tags":[50,24,1328,1325,1327,719,29,1329,1326],"class_list":["post-5736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daryl-gregory","tag-50","tag-3-2","tag-boy-bands","tag-daryl-gregory","tag-human-animal-hybrids","tag-humour","tag-novella","tag-the-island-of-dr-moreau","tag-tor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5760,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736\/revisions\/5760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}