Spock’s Brain and Other Missing Cerebrum

Brain-stealers! As a kid, I can recall the sheer terror of Doctor McCoy saying to Captain Kirk: “His brain is gone.” Aliens have stolen Mr. Spock’s brain! The crew of The Enterprise must go in search of that missing organ. That scene makes me laugh now. Critics have given that episode the title of “worst episode” of the series (It aired on September 20, 1968.) But what some may not realize is that brain-stealers is an old idea. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon didn’t come up with that one on their own.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs is famous for Tarzan of the Apes, but he actually got his start with John Carter of Mars. In 1927, Hugo Gernsback approached ERB about writing a novel for the first Amazing Stories Annual. It turned out to be the only one, Hugo switching to quarterlies instead. But that Pulp gave us The Mastermind of Mars, a rollicky adventure tale that used brain-switching. The mad scientist Ras Thavas sells new bodies to old rich people and transfers their brains. Here it is the bodies that are being stolen.

One of Vad Varo’s (our substitute John Carter) friends is Hovan Du, whose brain has been transplanted into a white ape. Having a human brain, Hovan also possesses the strength of one of Barsoom’s fiercest creatures, making him a good ally to have.

Edmond Hamilton

The Gernsback writer to use the idea next was Edmond Hamilton. In his story “The Comet Doom” (Amazing Stories, January 1928) he has cyborgs come from a comet to take over the planet. They set up a giant attractor that pulls the comet (filled with an invasion force of cyborgs) towards the Earth. One of the main characters has his brain placed in a metal body and works as a double agent. The image of the robot body by Frank R. Paul gave us the look of the killer robot at the same time.

S. P. Meek

“Stolen Brains” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October 1930) by S. P. Meek is a Dr. Bird adventure. Bird was a super scientist-adventurer, a precursor to Doc Savage. Bird and Carnes go underground so they can track down the crooks who have been stealing brain fluid from the smartest men in America. The duo track the villains’ weird ball-like ship back to Bald Mountain, a remote Canadian location. There in an underground lab, right out of a Bond movie, they find the head of the gang, Slavatsky. Bird witnesses the Russian draining “menthium” a brain fluid and the injecting it. The removal of menthium from the brain reduces the victim to an idiot. Dr. Bird takes the menthium from Slavatsky’s brain to save their latest victim, the President of the United States.

Neil R. Zones’s Zoromes

Hamilton inspired many SF writers including Neil R. Jones, who started his long-running series about the Zoromes with “The Jameson Satellite” (Amazing Stories, July 1931). Jones’s cyborgs replace their bodies with mechanical ones so they can travel the universe and explore. They don’t steal Professor Jameson’s brain but find it entombed in space. The prof didn’t want his body to disintegrate so he left it orbiting the earth in a self-made “satellite”. The Zoromes revive him and he becomes 21MM392. Unlike the story to follow, Jameson is not horrified to find himself not virtually immortal. Professor Jameson went on to have twenty-nine more adventures.

H. P. Lovecraft

“The Comet Doom” influenced another master of the fantastic, H. P. Lovecraft. His “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Weird Tales, August 1931) abandons the more SF ideas for a creepy one. The Fungi from Yuggoth, the Mi-Go, take human brains and place them in jars. These jars are sent to Pluto to become slave organs in their weird technology. The Mi-Go aren’t above impersonating humans by wearing their skins…

“Anthony Gilmore”

One of the great SF mysteries was “Who was Anthony Gilmore? He was harry Bates and Desmond W. Hall, the editors of the Clayton Astounding, where the Hawk Carse series appeared. “The Affair of the Brains” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1932). Ku Sui captures Carse and takes him to his secret base on an invisible asteroid. The master villain has retrieved the brains of the galaxy’s geniuses and connected them in a special tank. The combined power of these minds gives him a mental conglomerate that he uses to invent new creations and to plot his evil schemes. Capturing Leithgow, Ku Sui forces Carse to watch the operation that will remove his brain. Hawk and his sidekick, Friday, get loose and free their friend. Carse also takes the brain trust for his own.

Eando Binder

“Enslaved Brains” (Astounding Stories, July August September 1934) by Eando Binder (Reprinted in Fantastic Story Quarterly, Winter 1951) This is a lengthy serial about scientists living in a future world called Unitaria. Hackworth learns his sister, Helen’s brain is one of several used to run machinery. He and his friend Williams plot to save her from a living hell. The men lead a successful rebellion to change their world. E. F. Bleiler said of the novel: “Some interesting concepts at the beginning, but the story degenerates into too much dashing around and pulp simplistics. On the whole the story has more thought than is usual with Binder’s work, but is curiously archaic in mode.” None of that stopped it from being reprinted several times.

John W. Campbell

John W. Campbell must have also been inspired by Hamilton (I doubt, Lovecraft) when he wrote “The Brain-Stealers of Mars” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1936). Campbell’s Thushol are the brain-stealers of the title. The Thushol don’t actually steal your brains but telepathically rob you of your thoughts and knowledge so they can appear as anything they like, even you. They have lived parasitically off the centaur-like Martians for eons and now wish to go to Earth to live off humans. Once they had been to Earth but returned because of our primitiveness. These visitors were responsible for the stories about dopplegangers. This was Campbell’s dry-run for “Who Goes There?” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938), the story that inspired The Thing From Another World (1951) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). It is a little ironic that “Mr. Science-Fiction” gave us the goofy label of “Brain-Stealers”.

Hamilton Again!

Hamilton would use the floating brain for his character of Professor Simon Wright in his Captain Future series (Winter 1940-March 1951). Wright, a disembodied brain, is encased in a nuclear-powered life-support case that floats and has tentacle-mounted optics. Being so cerebral, he helps Curt Newton with brainy advice. Despite having a robot and an android sidekicks, Wright never thinks to place his brain inside a mechanical body…

Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster’s The Brain-Stealers (1954) was an Ace Double. It actually appeared earlier as “The Man With the Iron Cap” (Startling Stories, November 1947). The world is controlled by Big Brother. Cosmic vampires land on the Earth and take control of the populace. Jim Hunt, outlawed scientist, remains free of the aliens’ control and must save humanity. Leinster makes comparison between Big Brother mind-control and the meat puppets of the aliens. This novel reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (Galaxy, September October November 1951).

The Brainship

The idea of translating a human brain into technology used by Lovecraft for chills grew into the idea of “The Brainship” or a spaceship controlled by a human brain. James Blish used it in “Solar Plexus” (Astonishing Stories, September 1941) and Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore in “Camouflage” (Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1945) but it was Anne McCaffrey who took the idea to town with “The Ship Who Sang” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1961). Lots of writers have used it over the years though my favorite is probably Keith Laumer’s A Plague of Demons (IF, November December 1964)  and his super tanks, controlled by human brains.

The Cybermen

Before we give Star Trek too much attention, it should be noted that the British TV show Doctor Who created the Cybermen two years earlier. “The Tenth Planet” (which aired October8-29, 1966) introduced the cyborgs (right out of Edmond Hamilton’s playbook). The four episodes were written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. Davis would write the novelization of the episodes in 1976, Doctor Who and the Cybermen. Over the years the origin story of the Cybermen changed, originally humans bent on self-preservation, later the run-away tech of an evil corporation, either way a warning against rampage tech.

Conclusion

You would think after that laugh-fest that was “Spock’s Brain” that writers would shy away from brain-stealers. But that simply isn’t the case. In fact, some very good writers have used it successfully. “Johnny Mnemonic” (Omni, May 1981) and Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson were Cyberpunk’s answer to the brain stealer. Brain Theft (2010) by Alexander Jablokov marked his return to novel writing.  And like so many SF themes, the reality follows the stories.