Customer Reviews

Brains of Rats

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd never heard of michael blumlein before I read The Brains of Rats. I picked a copy up at a local library - and i've never been so fascinated. Blumlein has a wonderful writing style and his stories are some of the most bizarre pieces of fiction ever. This is one of the best authors of dark fiction that I've ever found.

This is an extremely hard book to categorize; it's quite disturbing, teeming with unsettling visions of madness and aberration. That said, it's also quite engrossing, containing stories that worm their way into your brain, lingering in memory for quite some time.

Blumlein has a medical background, which is very evident in the work presented here. "The Brains of Rats" features a geneticist who holds the fate of the world in his hands. "Tissue Ablation" and "Best Seller" both deal with organ harvesting, but veer off in wildly different directions. "The Thing Itself" is a tragic story of love between a doctor and nurse, so full of physical and mental anguish you'll feel exhausted after finishing.

But Blumlein's talent goes beyond this, as demonstrated by the other stories in this collection. Highlights include "Wet Suit", an intriguing look at fetishism, "Keeping House", which demonstrates that cleanliness is not always next to godliness, "Domino Master", a moving look at child abuse, and "The Promise of Warmth", which would have made a memorable "Twilight Zone" episode (the story did in fact first appear in the late, lamented Twilight Zone magazine).

The estimable Harlan Ellison said of The Brains of Rats, "This is not a book for everyone. Only those who delight in splendid, original thinking and rich, pyrotechnical language need apply...Mr. Blumlein carves enigmas and fabulous dark surprises from the magic mountain of his imagination." I wholeheartedly agree.

My dad picked this up at random from an MPH warehouse sale in Kuala Lumpur. I don't think he actually read any of the stories...I don't think he knew *I* read any of the stories, or he'd probably have given it away. The general impression one gets from these stories is like the Corinthian character in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics: creepy but really cool.

Who has a better position from which to observe the cruelties we inflict upon each other and ourselves, than a physician? Who is in a better position to view first-hand the human results of cold-blooded, morally vacant decisions made by people in power? If the physician is also cursed with having the vision to see his/her patients as more than a diseased organ, an out-of-place skeletal structure - the horror and irony must pile up fast, and doctors aren't supposed to lecture their patients on things other than the disorders they're presented with, as far as I know.

Maybe these stories represent Dr. Blumlein's outlet for what is obviously his outrage at the infinite varieties of human cruelty. Certainly I agree with the other reviewer who says "Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report" is the most savagely satirical piece of fiction I have ever read; in addition to giving "Mr. Reagan" his foreign policy Just Desserts, I suspect there's more than a little wishful revenge for his deliberate attempt to abort any efforts at containing the ravages of AIDs in the early years, when thousands of lives could have been saved. For those reasons, this is my favorite story in the collection.

But read them for their spot-on insights into human behavior; for their language, precise, cold as dry ice, and as searing. These are remarkable stories, and I've told everybody I know about them - but I do NOT loan out this book.

Michael Blumlein is a world class neurologist at UCSF.

His stories are deeply disturbing and draw on his deep medical background.

Some of his stories are politically based, but not all.

Just give him a try. You'll be glad you did.

Once in a great while you stumble across a work of fiction that makes you reevaluate everything you think, everything you feel, even everything you think you know. Michael Blumlein's collection The Brains of Rats contains twelve such works. Nine of these stories were previously published, and three of them were new when this collection was released by Scream Press.

upon reading these twelve stories the first question you will find yourself asking is: "what genre is this?" I can't answer that question. Blumlein can't answer it either. These stories are largely unclassifiable. They are truly Sui Genres, that is, they are their own category.



These stories defy comparison. While reading them one begins to think of Swift's most acerbic and caustic satire (think of A Modest Proposal), or Gibson's Cyberpunk (Mona Lisa Overdrive), or Saunders' Post Modern satire CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, or perhaps Lewis Carroll. But none of these are quite right. And yet, these stories call out toward all of these styles, and more. I guess the closest comparison is Roald Dahl (not the kid's books we all know, but his adult collections such as Someone Like You, and Switch B*tch), or perhaps the films of
Luis Bunel.


So, what are these stories about, you ask. Well, the title story concerns a doctor. He's male, but effeminate. He's married to a masculine woman who controls him. Sometimes he likes to cruise for men who will abuse him sexually. It seems that the doctor has discovered a way to insure that all children born from now on will be of a single sex. That is, he is going to choose which gender to eradicate. It never occurs to him that his decision (either one) will spell extinction for the human race. Along the way we get discussions of Jean D'Arc's sex, sexual deformities, and gonorrhea. This tale is presented in a paranoiac first person style that draws the reader into the skewed psyche of this very unreliable narrator. It is a queasy, yet exhilarating experience.

A few of the other stories include:

Best Seller is about a writer who's down on his luck. To support his family he begins selling parts of his body to a rich old man. Told in the form of diary entries, this story always remains distanced. This distance sucks all emotion from the story. It is cold, calculated. Beautiful.

Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: a Case Report is presented like a paper written for a medical journal. Blumlein is, in real life, a practicing MD. It shows in this story. With cold, dispassionate precision he recounts how a patient "Mr. Reagan", is dissected while awake and un-anesthetized. This is done so that portions of his body can be used to produce much needed goods for the third world. This story reads as the most vicious satire I have ever encountered. In this instance, Jonathan Swift aint got nothin' on our boy here. If you thought Network was angry satire, think again. If you think MAD magazine is satirical, well, not by these standards. Maybe you think South Park is strong satire? Have they ever dissected a live, conscious human on South Park? I don't think so. The point being made here is not a subtle one. This is clearly meant as redress for the foreign policy adventures of "Mr. Reagan's" administration. This story is powerful.

Drown Yourself is a sort of Cyberpunk whodunit? Kind of a `guess who's an android' tale. Nicely done, even if the idea isn't particularly new or novel.

Interview With C.W. is a surreal little gem. Impossible to get a hold on, this story just twists around in your mind. Like all those tubes on Star Trek, it goes nowhere, does nothing. But it does it nicely. Entertaining in a nightmare inducing way. In fact, this entire book is like a nightmare that has gone terribly out of control.

Freud would have loved Blumlein's work. He would have relished all the scarred psyche's, the out of control Id's, the unresolved sexual tension, and the (dare I say it?) Perversion. Somewhere, buried inside the plots and characters that inhabit these stories, is a moral. It is this: we hurt each other. We break each other. We leave scars, and other distinguishing marks. We bruise, and batter and break the minds and souls, even of those we love. Perhaps of those we love most of all.

Blumlein slips into and out of different writing styles effortlessly. He is a master of the written word. He is a genius (I think that word is much over used these days, but in this case it applies). Each of these stories will grab you by a vital organ (or, at least one you think is vital), and drag you along. You will hate Blumlein for forcing you to look at the delicate terrors he has presented (a decaying corpse, a horny android, a wet suit and a sex swing, and a man who is making himself a defacto leper are just a few that will haunt you). But, in the end you will be glad you took the journey. You will finish this book, and you will be different.

A word about the physical aspects of the book itself:
Released by Scream Press, this hardcover is beautifully designed. Bound in black, with silver inlaid writing along the spine, it is a lovely book. The dust cover, faded blue with slightly grainy images of faces, set into these pictures are close-ups of faces and brains. The book contains nine wonderful illustrations by Stephen Elston. These drawings have the feeling of some strange collage. They depict cruelty and gruesome violence, mixed with odd Victorian sexuality. These illustrations perfectly fit the mood, and tone of the stories.
One illustration of note features a revolver and a microscope fused into one deadly piece of scientific equipment.

As a final note: this book was published in 1989. It was never a best seller. Most people have never heard of it. The world isn't fair.

The short stories in Michael Blumlein's "The Brains of Rats" are very difficult to classify by genre. In another sense, they're quite easy to identify; they're all very well written and fascinating. Though the book's spine identifies the collection as "horror," that label applies only to some of the stories. The title story, for example, deals with the questions of gender and gender identity. My personal favorite story is the second, a little opus entitled "Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report."

Written in a clinical manner, this story is heavy in medical terminology and describes an operation on a conscious albeit paralyzed man. Blumlein's style here is both complex and powerful. Though the writing seems to attempt to give maximum attention to the clinical nature of the operation, there is a subtext of the feelings of the man on the table; it is almost impossible not to empathize with the patient, to feel his agony to at least some degree.

The stories in "The Brains of Rats" are extraordinarily diverse, from relatively benign fantasy at times to the significantly darker aspects of "Tissue Ablation." Almost without exception, they are fascinating and engrossing. This book is highly recommended for those who enjoy well-written, short fiction of a speculative nature.