By ALEXANDER BELIAEV (Macmillan; 1925/80)
A Soviet sci fi lark from the 1920s, a far simpler time when authors tended to run riot with coincidence and weird science in pursuit of a good story. As Theodore Sturgeon notes in his introduction, this novel was very much a product of the WEIRD TALES style of writing, in which the good guys are really good, the bad guys really bad and “The moral tone is as high as it can be…virtue is rewarded and evil punished.” PROFESSOR DOWELL’S HEAD was filmed twice, as the Soviet PROFESSOR DOWELL’S TESTAMENT (Zaveshchaniye professora Douelya; 1984) and the Chinese HEAD IN THE HOUSE (Xiōngzhái měirén tóu; 1989), and my recommendation is the same in both cases: read the novel instead.
PROFESSOR DOWELL’S TESTAMENT (Zaveshchaniye professora Douelya; 1984) Trailer
Alexander Beliaev (1884-1942) was the bestselling Soviet science fiction novelist of all time, and PROFESSOR DOWELL’S HEAD his first notable effort as a writer (he followed it with classics like THE AIR SELLER and AMPHIBIAN MAN). Macmillan’s 1980 publication, translated by Antonina W. Bouis, proclaims the book a “masterwork” that foresaw organ transplants and media manipulation.
The bad guy is Professor Kern, a mad scientist who keeps the head of the title character, a recently deceased surgeon, alive. Kern was only able to resurrect the professor’s head (because “You can’t do everything at once”), via a resurrection process that admittedly “has its discomforts for the resurrected.” The reason for keeping the head alive: so it can impart the secrets of post-resurrection existence, which only Professor Dowell knows.
This leads to a number of pulpy convolutions, notably the acquisition of two more disembodied heads. They belong to individuals named Thomas and Brigitte, the latter of whom gets a new body sewn onto her neck. This gives the book’s heroine, Kern’s assistant Marie Laurent, a chance to shine when a colleague notices the body of his former girlfriend, an opera diva named Angelica Gai, attached to Brigitte’s head.
This is fun stuff, written in a fast moving, clutter-free style. Of course it’s not particularly deep, and climaxes in a series of thoroughly predictable escapes, captures and shocking revelations. A moldy oddly, to be sure, but a damned enjoyable one.