Donovan's Brain/Hauser's Memory

Dr. Patrick Cory #1-2

by Curt Siodmak

An ambitious doctor experiments on, and becomes controlled by, the brain of a dead millionaire in "Donovan's Brain," and in "Hauser's Memory," a doctor unwittingly absorbs the memory of a dying scientist into his own brain. Reprint.

Genres: Science Fiction

444 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 5, 1992

About the author

Curt Siodmak (1902–2000) was a novelist and screenwriter, author of the novel Donovan's Brain, which was made into a number of films. He also wrote the novels Hauser's Memory and Gabriel's Body.

Born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, Curt Siodmak acquired a degree in mathematics before beginning to write novels. He invested early royalties earned by his first books in the movie Menschen am Sonntag (1929), a documentary-style chronicle of the lives of four Berliners on a Sunday based on their own lives. The movie was co-directed by Curt Siodmak's older brother Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script by Billy Wilder.

In the following years Curt Siodmak wrote many novels, screenplays and short stories including the novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (F.P.1 Doesn't Answer) (1933) which became a popular movie starring Hans Albers and Peter Lorre.

Siodmak decided to emigrate after hearing an anti-semitic tirade by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and departed for England where he made a living as a screenwriter before travelling to the USA in 1937.

His big break came with the screenplay for The Wolf Man (1941) which established this fictional creature as the most popular movie monster after Dracula and Frankenstein's monster.

In The Wolf Man Siodmak made reference to many werewolf legends: being marked by a pentagram; being practically immortal apart from being struck/shot by silver implements/bullets; and the famous verse:

"Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night May become a Wolf when the Wolfbane blooms And the autumn Moon is bright" (the last line was changed in the sequels to The Moon is full and bright).

Siodmak's science-fiction novel Donovan's Brain (1942) was a bestseller and was adapted for the cinema several times. Other notable films he wrote include Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, I Walked With a Zombie and The Beast With Five Fingers.

Reviews

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donovan's Brain is the first instance of the Living Brain in a Jar trope. Siodmak invented it. He also wrote the screenplay for the original Wolfman movie. This was published in the 1940's so it's full of stereotypes. There is even a hysterical woman who needs to be slapped across the face a couple of times to calm her down. She then falls right to sleep, exhausted by her neurosis! But it's all worth it for the taut storytelling. Great fun.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Described as "techno-thrillers" these two novels use the more horrifying aspect of future technology to create both excitement and suspense. Donovan's Brain was the first of its kind in that it dealt with the subject of the "living brain" kept alive artificially, a subject which, since the novel's appearance, has been explored and reworked endlessly in countless stories, comic books, television dramas, and on radio.
In Hauser's Memory Curt Siodmak once again probes the horizons of science in an extraordinary novel, part science fiction, part international suspense. Dr. Patrick Cory, the Nobel Prizewinning biochemist who figures in Donovan's Brain, is the world's leading authority on RNA (ribonucleic acid) - the brain substance that stores memory. The suspense builds from there. Both of these novels were among the great reads of my teen years.

[Trent Macdonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Donovan's Brain : very much a psychological horror story in spite of the very real threat of the titular villain.

Hauser's Memory : an tale of Cold War intrigue and action with some meditations on the nature of personality/identity that feel incorrectly placed. Moves with a nice pace.