Brain Wave

By: Poul Anderson

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

For millions of years, the part of the galaxy containing our solar system has been moving through a vast force field that has been inhibiting certain electromagnetic and electrochemical processes and, thus, certain neurotic functions. When Earth escapes the inhibiting field, synapse speed immediately increases, causing a rise in intelligence, which results in a transfigured humanity reaching for the stars, leaving behind our earth to the less intelligent humans and animal life-forms.

This is a transcendent look at the possible effects of enhanced intelligence on our planet.

©1954 Poul Anderson (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A masterpiece.” (Larry Niven)

Another brilliant Poul Anderson classic

Although written decades ago, this is a remarkably fresh story with wonderful speculations about how the world would change if everything with a nervous system suddenly started getting a lot smarter. The idea shows up a few decades later, highly modified, in Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep, but there it plays out on a more galactic scale. In Anderson's version we get a more intimately human look at what our intelligence means to us. Well narrated too boot.

Good book.

I really enjoyed this book. My one outstanding question is what about the rats and mice. Already smart to start with they could become scary.

Old school sci-fi

A wonderful thought experiment. Slow burn. More philosophical than action-adventure, and wonderfully worth the time to listen. Well performed.

a good story

the story overall was good. some parts of the story seem to lean towards a specific sort of bias as to how people would react to a sudden increase in thinking capacity but I guess that's to be expected when reading, or in this case listening, to sci fi stories.

Flowers for Algernon and everyone else

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave is an engaging tale of Earth emerging into a region of space that now allows for neural circuitry to move faster with the result that not only humans, but all animals with 'brains' are now 5X smarter than before. The story recounts not only the scientific adjustments, but also the societal adaptations that take place, not all of which are positive. In particular, mundane physical and clerical occupations go unfilled creating issues with feeding and maintaining civilization. At the same time, a star faring expedition is mounted that finds Earth unique among galactic intelligent species ascribed to its unique evolutionary history of intelligence forming with the 'brakes on'. Some people can't adapt and find ways to go back to their normal.

Anderson asks a simple questions and explores what on the surface sounds like a wonderful situation, but then goes on to detail all the possible problems. At the same time, he distinguishes intelligence from wisdom as smarter people are not always best for implementing solutions. One criticism is that he doesn't separate intelligence from knowledge. When the spacecraft reaches the field barrier and the neural slowdown ensues, the astronauts become forgetful as well as slow-witted, but they were brilliant scientists before and they revert to far below their former potential by forgetting what they have already learned.

The narration is well done with decent character distinction, especially with a host of accents. Pacing is brisk, making for a quick listen.

Decent enough sci-fi from it's lens of time

Pretty good sci-fi from it's time, but it's not particularly "timeless".

The story is interesting both from the sci-fi perspective and the retro/historical perspective, just go in knowing that everything is from that 1954 perspective. The politics, the science, the ideals, the relationships, and all of the expected -ism's are present, either directly, indirectly, or subtly.

Wonderful story!

This book started slow but grabbed my interest quickly. The author weaved the separate experiences into a nice web. The thoughtfulness of each character and chapter made me smile, grimace and cheer.

Egghead Men

Written in 1954 this book is very dated. Everyone, human and animal gets smarter. One poor housewife who was pretty but stupid, gets smarter, but the poor thing just was not built to be smart and she goes crazy. A guy who is almost a Moron, gets smarter and he becomes a great leader. There is one woman who has a job, she is handsome not pretty and she is an office manager, certainly not a scientist. PA tries to speak out against the atrocities against black, but in so doing, kind of admits that he thinks blacks are not as smart as whites.

PA also believes that when people get smart they leave the cities. There is the usual 50's bitch about using atomic bombs. People who drive trucks, work on assembly lines or do manual labor are stupid and when they get smarter they rather starve to death then do these jobs.

They story does move along very quick and there is some interesting talk about intelligence and what is it really. A like all the farm scenes and how the animals reacted to be smarter. An updated version by Robert Sawyer would be good.

Pohl Anderson is one of the reasons I love SciFi!

Pohl Anderson, Isaac Asimov and a small handful of others are the primary reason I love science-based SciFi today. I missed reading Brain Wave during my formative years and I was thrilled to find it listed as a freebie on Audible! The language and cultural settings are dated (1954) but the concepts and through line of the story are surprisingly timeless, filled with scientific and psychological twists, suspense, and plot turns that kept me engaged through to the books ultimate conclusion. Pohl Anderson is one of the giants!

flowers for everyone

This reminds me of Flowers for Algernon, writ large. I wish they had more classic science fiction from the 1950s and 60s and a way to search for that specifically, but they only display the current publication date instead of the original publication date. Lazy oversight.