Donovan's Brain/Hauser's Memory

What a terrific idea to introduce people to the works of Curt Siodmak--two books in one! I certainly appreciated the ability to read the first two books in the Patrick Cory trilogy (also including Gabriel's Body) by buying just one book.Donovan's Brain is a terrific SF/horror novel combining medical experimentation with horrific consequences. Cory saves the brain of a millionaire (this is where all the "brain that lived" storylines originated) and keeps it alive in a jar with electricity and tubes containing oxygenated fluid. But the brain begins to control him. Yeah, I know, it sounds silly, but Siodmak writes in such a way to pull you into the story.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.Siodmak is obviously the master of this kind of story. He is probably more well-known for writing Universal horror films from the '40's like The Wolf Man. I am an old-time radio fan and I knew him from the Suspense adaptation of Donovan's Brain starring Orson Welles.I am looking forward to reading the third book in this series and certainly will look for more works by Curt Siodmak in the future.

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.

Dr. Patrick Corey, the main character, deals with two experiments on the human brain. Both are narrated well, are fascinating and they give some real thrill about the opportunities science has got. It is on the one hand like opening Pandora's box, showing a nightmare becoming true, and on the other the prospects that could be reached. Never science is alone, like in a lab. There are always other interests interfering - politics, especially in the time of the Cold War, and money, but also human features like pride or man's will to get as close as possible to the secrets of nature. Siodmak tells the stories and the reader thinks the story on with all the possible consequences. Real horror to see peril and evil and hope and help clearly in the same topic!!!