Donovan's brain (Tandem sci-fi) [Paperback]

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.