Customer Reviews

Forrest J. Ackerman Presents Hauser's Memory

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In Hauser's Memory, a biochemist, Dr. Hillel Mondoro, deliberately injects himself with RNA extracted from the brain of a man who has just died - Dr. Karl Hauser, a physicist. Mondoro believes the RNA might, or might not, encode the memory of the dead man. He experiments on himself in order to find out. In this story it turns out that RNA does indeed encode Hauser's memories. But science fiction novels are supposed to work within the factual framework of science. Does this one?

Hauser's Brain was written in the mid-1960s. It was partly inspired by a UCLA experiment which suggested that RNA encoded memory in the brain. In this experiment a rat's memory appeared to have been transferred, via RNA extract, to another rat. But before the novel was published the UCLA experiment was utterly decredited. Some 23 scientists jointly authored a paper in Science reporting their respective laboratory's attempts and failures to replicate the memory transfer. The idea has never recovered respectablity. It survives primarily in this novel.

Yet in retrospect it is easy to see that neither the original experiment nor the failure to replicate its result meant anything at all. The episode provided us with no new knowledge about RNA or the brain or the memory. It did give strong direction to the study of memory - basically by slamming a door. Fully two decades later, when I was studying neurochemistry in graduate school, our textbook's (short!) chapter on learning and memory simply advised that it would be a mistake, professionally, to even attempt research on memory chemistry. Pretty succinct career advice.

Today, no one could say decisively whether or not nucleic acids encode memory in the brain. It is unclear how one would go about testing, proving, or refuting the idea. Around 1993, however, the prevailing model of memory, which holds that it is a function of synaptic modification, began to balk a bit because we suddenly lost our most basic understanding of what nerve impulses (and thus, synapses) actually do. See Spikes, by Rieke et al for this story, or Koch. Probably the idea that human memory, like most biological information, is stored as molecular sequences or shapes - will get a second hearing someday. Meantime this novel, Hauser's Memory, has a perfectly valid poetic license. It is first rate entertainment, and it should be recognized that it is only Curt Siodmak's great gift as a storyteller that has kept this interesting technical idea alive for the past 35 years.

Although you probably know that. You're probably not here unless you've already read that book (or perhaps Gabriel's Body) and want to know more about what happened to Dr. Patrick Cory.

Well, Hauser's Memory is along the same lines, except that in this one Cory and his colleague Hillel Mondoro try to save just the memory of a dead Nazi--Karl Hauser--by extracting the RNA from the brain using mortar, pestle, and centrifuge. Cory offers himself as the subject but Mondoro injects himself behind Cory's back. Mondoro almost immediately begins to feel the effects--having dreams and memories--and begins to follow the dead man's wishes.

Similar story as before, but still well-told.

Hauser's Memory is a great book. The book is not filled with action, but the plot never ceases to thicken. Hauser's Memory, unlike many other books I've read, does have a good ending. There are no strings attached when the book concludes. The book is filled with German names, and math and science terms that make it difficult to read. I was interested constantly with this book.