Advances in genetic engineering have made the creation of animals with human intelligence a scientific possibility. Though Lives of the Monster Dogs is almost antiscientific in its blatant disregard of scientific probability, it is akin to a growing number of works of science fiction that explore the moral, social, and scientific implications of creating animal-human hybrids.

The most important influence on Bakis's novel, however, predates the science of biotechnology. The prototype for Lives of the Monster Dogs and, indeed, all novels about human/animal chimeras, is H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. Published in 1896, Wells' novel was prompted by advances in what we would now call "plastic surgery." What is most compelling about Moreau, however, is not its now dated scientific extrapolations, but its disturbing depiction of a deeply flawed human exercising god-like control over the animal world.

In both Moreau and Monster Dogs...