The Burnaby Experiments

by Stephen Gilbert, Patricia Craig (Preface)

"A writer of distinction." - E. M. Forster

"[A]n unusual, talented book with many good things in it. [...] Stephen Gilbert is an interesting writer, whose material is out of the ordinary run of things." - Anthony Powell

Marcus Brownlow was a strange and imaginative young schoolboy whose dreams sometimes foretold the future. Now he's nineteen, unemployed, directionless, and not ready to grow up. An unexpected invitation from a school friend to visit him at the house of his eccentric millionaire uncle Mr. Burnaby seems to hint at adventure and a change of fortune. But what Marcus doesn't know is that Mr. Burnaby wants his help in a series of strange experiments whose ultimate goal is to discover what happens to the soul after death. What begins as harmless fun as Mr. Burnaby teaches Marcus how to project his spirit out from his body quickly becomes more sinister, and may lead to a horrible fate even more terrifying than death. . . .

Stephen Gilbert (1912-2010) is best remembered for his novel Ratman's Notebooks (1968), twice filmed as Willard, and for his friendship as a young man with the much older novelist Forrest Reid. The Burnaby Experiments (1952) is a brilliant and unclassifiable novel, part fantasy, part science fiction, part horror, and partly a thinly veiled and blackly humorous fictionalization of Gilbert's difficult relationship with Reid. This first-ever reprinting of Gilbert's scarce novel coincides with its 60th anniversary and features the original jacket art by legendary book designer Berthold Wolpe.

Genres: Horror

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Stephen Gilbert (1912-2010) was born in Newcastle, Co. Down in 1912. He was sent to England for boarding school from age 10 to 13 and afterwards to a Scottish public school, which he left without passing any exams or obtaining a leaving certificate. He returned to Belfast, where he worked briefly as a journalist before joining his father’s tea and seed business. In 1931, just before his nineteenth birthday, Gilbert met novelist Forrest Reid, by that time in his mid-fifties. Reid’s numerous novels reflect his lifelong fascination with teenage boys, and he was quickly drawn to Gilbert; the two commenced a sometimes turbulent friendship that lasted until Reid’s death in 1947. Reid acted as mentor to Gilbert, who had literary aspirations, and ultimately depicted an idealized version of their relationship in the novel Brian Westby (1934).

Gilbert’s first novel, The Landslide (1943), a fantasy involving prehistoric creatures which appear in a remote part of Ireland after being uncovered by a landslide, appeared to generally positive reviews and was dedicated to Reid. A realistic novel, Bombardier (1944), followed, based on Gilbert’s experiences in the Second World War. Gilbert’s third novel, Monkeyface (1948), concerns what seems to be an ape, called “Bimbo,” discovered in South America and brought back to Belfast, where it learns to talk. The Burnaby Experiments appeared in 1952, five years after Reid’s death, and is a thinly disguised portrayal of their relationship from Gilbert’s point of view and a belated response to Brian Westby. His final novel, Ratman’s Notebooks (1968), the story of a loner who learns he can train rats to kill, would become his most famous, being twice filmed as Willard (1971; 2003).

Gilbert married his wife Kathleen Stevenson in 1945; the two had four children, and Gilbert devoted most of his time from the 1950s onward to family life and his seed business. He died in Northern Ireland in 2010 at age 97.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember when or how I originally heard about this book, but for some reason, I had long regarded it as a rare curiosity, almost impossible to get hold of. The discovery that it's actually available on Kindle and costs under £4 made it a guaranteed purchase.

The Burnaby Experiments opens with a framing device: the unidentified narrator has been named as 'literary executor' in the will of Marcus Brownlow, whom he knew at school but hasn't had any contact with since. The scene is set as the narrator outlines what he learns of Marcus: that he became secretary-companion to the eccentric, reclusive millionaire John Burnaby; that he wrote a lengthy autobiography, which the executor attempts to publish, to no avail. The story, then, is the executor's edit of Marcus's memoir and Burnaby's papers, rewritten as a novel.

As a boy, Marcus discovers he has the uncanny ability to see the future in his dreams. In his late teens, he is contacted by Burnaby, who has similar abilities. I loved the weirdness of Burnaby's first appearance, in which he takes the form of a boy Marcus knew at school – it's many years later, but this boy is still a child, exactly as Marcus remembers him. Burnaby is counting on the power of this image to evoke Marcus's happy memories of school and boyhood, and only when the pair reach Burnaby's house does he reveal his true, elderly form.

Burnaby promises that, through a series of gruelling 'experiments', the two of them can learn to harness and control their shared power, and even find a way to cheat death. And so Marcus enters his tutelage, living with Burnaby at his County Donegal home ('The Garrison') and telling his family he has found employment as a secretary. Over time, however, Marcus's naive commitment to the experiments turns out to be something of an albatross, and he begins to tire of Burnaby's insistence that he devote his whole life to them at the expense of all else.

I often see those who read a lot of romantic fiction bemoaning the phenomenon of 'instalove', and I thought of this when the story turned to a rather tedious scenario involving Marcus falling for a local girl named Hazel. It serves the plot very neatly that Marcus not only fancies Hazel but falls so head over heels in love – in a couple of days – that he's ready to give up his whole life. And in fact I'm rather inclined to agree with Burnaby that 'if you'd slept with her a few times and lived with her for a month you'd be sick to death of her'. Really, you need to know that the novel is based on Gilbert's relationship with his (much older) mentor, Forrest Reid; it then becomes clear that Marcus's desire for Hazel, and the idea that forsaking her is some great sacrifice, is symbolic of so much more than a youthful crush. (This knowledge also makes some elements, such as Burnaby's obsession with touching Marcus, seem rather more sinister.) Even so, the amount of time Gilbert spends on the Hazel story is frustrating when there are so many more interesting avenues to explore.

The last few chapters make up for that by being phenomenal. Post-Hazel, Marcus intensifies his work on the experiments, redoubling his attempts to contact the 'spirits' of others. Burnaby's health declines, and the two renew their philosophical discussions about the nature of their work, implicitly working towards the 'Last Experiment' Burnaby has dreamed of. After the abrupt end of the Marcus/Burnaby manuscript, the voice of the literary executor returns: he travels to The Garrison to learn more about the deaths of both men. He may not fully understand the meaning of what he discovers there, but the reader does, and the conclusion of the book is sufficiently terrifying (yet subtle and elegantly achieved) to make it comparable to the horror greats.

This is certainly a book that should be better-known, and I'd recommend it to those who enjoy classic horror and the more understated type of ghost story.

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[Greg Gbur · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I really should be writing about novels other than those published by Valancourt Books, and I will, but they have released so many eye-catching books in recent years that I’ve had a hard time staying away. Most recently, I read their edition of The Burnaby Experiments (1952), by Stephen Gilbert.

The goal of the titular experiments is likely familiar to those who have experienced a lot of horror and science fiction: to find out what lies beyond death. You may have seen the movie Flatliners in 1990, for instance, or read the 1993 novel The Terminal Experiment by Robert Sawyer. Or, like me, you may have independently written a story based on the same theme years earlier.

Gilbert’s novel offers a unique and very personal take on the concept, however. In fact it is semi-autobiographical, and the implications of that subtext are perhaps more disturbing than the actual story at times."

Read the whole review.