Inspired by H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, M. Renard in his Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu (1908) portrays a mad scientist experimenting on living organisms, creating hybrids of humans, animals and plants. Renard extends the anachronistic theory of the Chain of Being to include machines, which he sees as the future of humanity, securing the place of his Lerne in the vanguard of transumanist literature. This paper aims to examine the novel’s intertextual references to both fictional and actual history of science.