Customer Reviews

DONOVAN'S BRAIN.

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

 

 

Some years ago, I saw a list of Stephen King's ten favorite fantasy-horror novels, and Donovan's Brain was on that list. Naturally, I added the book to my own collection. It really is a good old-fashioned mid-twentieth century horror story. The basis of the tale is rather standard fare: a young, obsessive doctor (Patrick Cory) insists on pushing the limits of human knowledge by attempting to keep a brain alive outside of a host body. A pretty, neglected wife watches and worries, and an older colleague consistently berates the young doctor for his all-consuming passion and preaches to him the dangers of playing God. After some limited success sustaining a monkey's brain, the doctor is presented with a golden opportunity to expand his work to the human brain itself. A plane crashes in the remote area of his private laboratory. He amputates the crushed legs of one survivor, but he knows the man will never live long enough to reach a hospital. Quickly, he seizes the opportunity so serendipitously handed to him by fate. In effect, he steals the brain of the man and coerces his reluctant colleague to help him cover up the act. It turns out that the victim is a man of great wealth and fame named Donovan.. The brain is placed in a vessel, its arteries supplied with blood by an artificial pump. Dr. Cory studies the brain, observes its cycles of sleep and wakefulness via electronic readings, and tries to communicate with it. In time, the brain not only communicates with Cory but comes to take control of his own body, seeing with his eyes, carrying out the dead man's former agenda. When the older doctor tries to destroy the brain, it compels Dr. Cory to attack him. The brain sends Cory to Los Angeles to carry out its orders, which includes freeing a murderer from prison, and Cory eventually becomes a prisoner in his own body, capable of watching the brain speak with his voice and move with his body. The physical brain grows larger and more powerful as Cory's reluctant colleague continues "feeding" it in the lab. Predictably, the book climaxes on a battle between the brain and Dr. Cory for permanent control of Cory's body.

It sounds like standard B-movie sci-fi fare, but Siodmak's writing never allows the story to become a stereotypical, Saturday matinee-type adventure. While I did not find this book particularly horrifying, I did find it compelling and completely engrossing. As an interesting aside, this book would seem to supply the source of a particular tongue-twister used by Stephen King in his novel It. All in all, this is classic sci-fi/horror at its best and stands shoulders above most of the similar works written in the golden age of science fiction.

This is the first book to feature a brain being kept alive outside its body. Now, if you think about that, there have been several stories to use that idea. You can thank Curt Siodmak for that.

Donovan's Brain is a really good read, besides. I read it in two days, and that is pretty fast for me. Every free minute I had, I picked it up and continued the story. I think that says a lot.

Now, I'm not saying it's a great novel. It is not. But it has that one aspect that all good novels should have--grip. This story gripped me and I constantly wanted to know what would happen next.

This book was written in 1948 but it feels as if it were written today. If you are a fan of science-fiction (or of the Orson Welles radio play that was made from this, as I am), I think you would enjoy Donovan's Brain.

This is an *extremely* scary book. It starts off as a sci-fi novel, in which a scientist experiments on keeping brains alive after death, but then it turns into a bit of a horror novel, much the way the first "Alien" movie did, starting with when he gets the brain of a millionaire who died in a plane crash nearby... Well, I don't want to ruin it for anyone, so I'll just end it there. It is VERY scary, and for two main reasons: one, the book is just plain scary, and two, because after reading the book, it really makes you think: what if...?

I confess that for years I had heard of Curt Siodmak's _Donovan's Brain_ (1943), though I had never read the novel. Curt Siodmak was a German screenwriter, director, and science fiction author. Some of Siodmak's other novels include _Skyport_ (1959), _Hauser's Memory_ (1968), and _City in the Sky_ (1974). _Hauser's Memory_ is a sequel of sorts to _Donovan's Brain_.

_Donovan's Brain_ has been made into a movie three times: as _The Lady and the Monster_ (1944), as _Donovan's Brain_ (1953), and as _Vengeance_ (1963). It was parodied in _The Man Wth Two Brains_ (1983). I would not be surprised to see yet another movie served up at some point. Does the original novel merit such attention?

Well, no. Not really. The science is extremely simple-minded (as is the case in other Siodmak novels and screenplays). The plot is more 1930s _Amazing_ than 1940s _Astounding_, with the scientist in the white lab coat rearing back in horror from the test-tube monster. But it is a passable Gothic chiller. The story unfolds in a series of letters and journal notations written by various characters (shades of _Dracula_!). Donovan, a wealthy industrialist, is killed in a plane crash; but his brain is preserved by an enthusiastic scientist. Donovan's evil personality takes over the minds and bodies of others, forcing them to do his will with forgery, murder, and-- when their use is over-- suicide.

It is to Siodmak's credit that he makes Donovan a genuinely menacing personality. The novel is better than I feared that it would be. But it is not a major piece of writing.