Curt Siodmak's Donovan’s Brain

Donovan’s Brain is a 1942 science fiction novel by Curt Siodmak.

German-born Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) enjoyed success as an author, screenwriter and film director.

The fact that it’s about a disembodied brain kept alive in a laboratory might tempt some readers to dismiss this book as mere pulp science fiction but Siodmak was a writer with more substance than that.

He addressed a similar theme again much later in his excellent 1968 novel Hauser's Memory.

Donovan’s Brain is the story of a bizarre medical experiment carried out by Dr Patrick Cory. He is obsessed by the idea of keeping a brain alive outside the body. He has had limited success with monkeys. Then a golden opportunity is dropped into his lap. A light plane has crashed in the mountains. Dr Cory is first on the scene. A man in his sixties is horribly injured and his chances of survival are nil, but his brain is undamaged. Dr Cory is able to remove the brain. The brain is placed in a large glass jar filled with serum and surprisingly remains alive.

Keeping Donovan’s brain alive is all well and good but Dr Cory wants to find a way to communicate with it. There’s no doubt that Donovan’s personality still exists.

He finds a way to communicate but Donovan’s messages are rather cryptic.

There’s also a mystery story of sorts. Donovan’s behaviour just before the plane crash was puzzling. And Donovan has some odd obsessions. It’s possible that those obsessions now dominate his personality. Dr Cory needs to find out more about Donovan in order to make sense of whatever it is that Donovan is trying to tell him. Donovan’s surviving children may have their own reasons for not wanting Cory to learn certain things. It’s also apparent that they think Donovan told Dr Cory something important before dying (they of course do not know that Donovan is still alive after a fashion).

Donovan’s personality has to some extent taken lodgement in Dr Cory’s brain. And Donovan is a very strong personality. And, perhaps, not quite sane. Perhaps he was never quite sane.

The idea of two personalities, with conflicting agendas, occupying the same brain has been used countless times but it’s worth remembering that Siodmak was utilising this idea way back in 1942.

And he was doing it skilfully. Neither the reader nor Dr Cory have any reason to think that there is anything sinister about Donovan, at first. Donovan was a remarkable man. Dr Cory was particularly excited to have the opportunity to preserve his brain - it would be an opportunity to learn about the workings of the mind of a man who had achieved great success. And for quite a while Cory isn’t concerned. Donovan’s obsessions seem to be simply a desire to correct mistakes that he made. Nothing worrying about that. It’s only very gradually that Cory begins to suspect that perhaps Donovan was somewhat sinister. But what I like about this story is that Dr Cory is not having his mind invaded by the mind of a psycho killer. Donovan is more complicated than that.

Dr Cory is confident that he can remain in control. Donovan’s brain is just a mass of brain tissue sitting in a glass jar filled with nutrients.

This is a story focused not just on Donovan’s obsessions but on Dr Cory’s as well. They are perhaps similar in some ways - both are men driven by ambition. Dr Cory is driven by ambition in a good way. He wants to advance scientific knowledge. There’s no harm in that is there?

This is fine intelligent science fiction with some dashes of mystery and horror. Curt Siodmak certainly deserves to be appreciated more. Highly recommended.

And Siodmak’s Hauser’s Memory is very much worth reading as well.