Donovan's Brain is a 1942 science fiction novel by American writer Curt Siodmak. [1]
The novel was an instant success and has been adapted to film three times. Since then the book has become something of a cult classic, with fans including Stephen King, who discussed the novel in his 1981 book Danse Macabre and mentions it in his novel/miniseries It . Siodmak later wrote a sequel in 1968 titled Hauser's Memory and wrote a final sequel in 1991 titled Gabriel's Body.
The novel was initially published as a three-part serial in the September–November 1942 issues of the pulp magazine Black Mask . [2] The first complete edition was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1943, and it was provided to U.S. military personnel as an Armed Services Edition during World War II. The work has since been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, and Dutch. [3]
The novel is written in the form of diary entries by Dr. Patrick Cory, a middle-aged physician whose experiments at keeping a brain alive are subsidized by Cory's wealthy wife. Under investigation for tax evasion and criminal financial activities, millionaire megalomaniac W.H. Donovan crashes his private plane in the desert near the home of Dr. Cory. The physician is unable to save Donovan's life, but removes his brain on the chance that it might survive, placing the gray matter in an electrically charged, oxygenated saline solution within a glass tank. The brainwaves indicate that thought – and life – continue. Cory makes several futile attempts to communicate with it. Finally, one night Cory receives unconscious commands, jotting down a list of names in a handwriting not his own – it is Donovan's. Cory successfully attempts telepathic contact with Donovan's brain, much to the concern of Cory's occasional assistant, Dr. Schratt, an elderly alcoholic.
Gradually, the malignant intelligence takes over Cory's personality, leaving him in an amnesiac fugue state when he awakes. The brain uses Cory to do his bidding, signing checks in Donovan's name, and continuing the magnate's illicit financial schemes. Cory becomes increasingly like the paranoid Donovan, his physique and manner morphing into the limping image of the departed criminal. Donovan's bidding culminates in an attempt to have Cory kill a young girl who stands in the way of his plans. Realizing he will soon have no control over his own body and mind, his assistant, Schratt, devises a plan to destroy the brain during its quiescent period. Schratt resists the brain's hypnotic power by repeating the rhyme, "Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts." Schratt destroys the housing tank with an axe and leaves the brain of Donovan to die, thus ending his reign of madness. During the encounter, however, the brain, attempting to defend itself, orders Schratt's heart to stop beating. Schratt dies, but bearing a look of fulfillment.
Originally performed by Orson Welles in a 1944 radio play of the series Suspense , reprised in 1948 by John McIntyre. In 1982, the LP album release of the 1944 radio version of this story won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
The novel has been adapted for the screen three times – as The Lady and the Monster (1944), Donovan's Brain (1953), and The Brain (1962).
I, Robot is a fixup collection made up of science fiction short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were then collected into a 1950 publication Gnome Press in 1950, in an initial edition of 5,000 copies.
Suspense is a radio drama series broadcast on CBS Radio from 1940 through 1962.
Who Goes There? is a 1938 science fiction horror novella by American author John W. Campbell, written under the pen name Don A. Stuart. Its story follows a group of people trapped in a scientific outpost in Antarctica infested by shapeshifting monsters able to absorb and perfectly imitate any living being, including humans. Who Goes There? was first published in the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine and was also printed as The Thing from Another World, as well as included in the collection by the same title. Its extended, novel version, found in an early manuscript titled Frozen Hell, was finally published in 2019.
Rebecca is a 1938 Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier. The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, Rebecca.
Curt Siodmak was a German-American novelist, screenwriter and director. He is known for his work in the horror and science fiction film genres, with such films as The Wolf Man and Donovan's Brain. He was the younger brother of noir director Robert Siodmak.
Black Friday is a 1940 American science fiction horror film starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
Violet Lucille Fletcher was an American screenwriter of film, radio and television. Her credits include The Hitch-Hiker, an original radio play written for Orson Welles and adapted for a notable episode of The Twilight Zone television series. Lucille Fletcher also wrote Sorry, Wrong Number, one of the most celebrated plays in the history of American radio, which she adapted and expanded for the 1948 film noir classic of the same name. Married to composer Bernard Herrmann in 1939, she wrote the libretto for his opera Wuthering Heights, which he began in 1943 and completed in 1951, after their divorce.
Son of Dracula is a 1943 American horror film directed by Robert Siodmak with a screenplay based on an original story by his brother Curt Siodmak. The film stars Lon Chaney Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, Evelyn Ankers, and Frank Craven. The film is set in the United States, where Count Alucard has just taken up residence. Katherine Caldwell (Allbritton), a student of the occult, becomes fascinated by Alucard and eventually marries him. Katherine begins to look and act strangely, leading her former romantic partner Frank Stanley (Paige) to suspect that something has happened to her. He gets help from Dr. Brewster (Craven) and psychologist Laszlo who come to the conclusion that Alucard is a vampire.
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, the second in his Growth trilogy after The Turmoil (1915) and before The Midlander. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Donovan's Brain is an independently made 1953 American black-and-white science fiction horror film, produced by Tom Gries for Allan Dowling Productions, directed by Felix Feist, that stars Lew Ayres, Gene Evans, Nancy Davis and Steve Brodie. The film was distributed by United Artists and is based on the 1942 horror novel Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak.
The Lady and the Monster is a 1944 American science fiction horror film directed by George Sherman, and starring Vera Ralston, Richard Arlen, and Erich von Stroheim. The film is about the attempts to keep alive the brain of a multimillionaire after his death, only to create a telepathic monster. The man then takes over the medical assistant's mind, and the "lady" of the title has to fight it. The film's copyright was renewed in 1971, so it will enter the American public domain in 2040.
The Suspect is a 1944 American film noir starring Charles Laughton and Ella Raines, and directed by Robert Siodmak. Set in Edwardian London in 1902, it is based on the 1939 novel This Way Out, by James Ronald, and was released by Universal Pictures.
An isolated brain is a brain kept alive in vitro, either by perfusion or by a blood substitute, often an oxygenated solution of various salts, or by submerging the brain in oxygenated artificial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). It is the biological counterpart of brain in a vat. A related concept, attaching the brain or head to the circulatory system of another organism, is called a head transplant. An isolated brain, however, is more typically attached to an artificial perfusion device rather than a biological body.
Hauser's Memory is a 1970 science fiction television movie directed by Boris Sagal and that starred David McCallum, Susan Strasberg, Lilli Palmer, Robert Webber and Leslie Nielsen. The screenplay by Adrian Spies was based on a 1968 novel of the same name by Curt Siodmak, which reworked the central idea of his novel Donovan's Brain (1943).
The Brain, also known as Vengeance and Ein Toter sucht seinen Mörder, is a 1962 UK-West German co-production science fiction thriller film directed by Freddie Francis, and starring Anne Heywood and Peter van Eyck. It is adapted from the 1942 Curt Siodmak novel Donovan's Brain, and in this film, differing from earlier adaptations, the dead man seeks his murderer through hypnotic contact with the doctor keeping his brain alive.
Project X is a 1968 independently made color science fiction film, produced and directed by William Castle, starring Christopher George, Greta Baldwin, Henry Jones, and Monte Markham. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures and is adapted from the science fiction novels The Artificial Man (1965) and Psychogeist (1966) by L. P. Davies. The script was written by Edmund Morris and had special sequences animated by Hanna-Barbera.
This is a comprehensive listing of the radio programs made by Orson Welles. Welles was often uncredited for his work, particularly in the years 1934–1937, and he apparently kept no record of his broadcasts.
Radio is what I love most of all. The wonderful excitement of what could happen in live radio, when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I was making a couple of thousand a week, scampering in ambulances from studio to studio, and committing much of what I made to support the Mercury. I wouldn't want to return to those frenetic 20-hour working day years, but I miss them because they are so irredeemably gone.
The Hive is a 2019 science fiction novel by American writers Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, and the second book of the Second Formic Wars trilogy of novels in the Ender's Game series. It was released on June 11, 2019. It is the sequel to The Swarm and will be followed by a novel titled The Queens.
