THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #27: A review of "The Red Brain" by Donald Wandrei

Here Pelan makes an odd choice. When compared with most stories of the day, this would most certainly be filed with SF rather than horror. Yet Wandrei has a few tricks up his sleeve, most notably the one he reveals on the final page.



Wandrei certainly comes out swinging, starting with nothing less than the absolute destruction of the universe. Well, almost absolute. No, Earth wasn’t spared. It has long since been dispensed with before the beginning of this story. Something called the Dust has been traveling the universe, killing stars and eating planets as it goes. Finally, all that remains is a star called Antares, where the final civilization in history exists. The most advanced brains in existence live here, and they’ve been trying for millions of years to stop the Dust. In fact, they’ve evolved to the point of losing their bodies to large, dark, gelatinous brains.


Now, on the very brink of their destruction, they’re going over the list of things they’ve tried to use in stopping the Dust, all of which has failed. As the Dust starts sprinkling against their domes, they put out a final request for ideas, and the Red Brain answers . . . .


SPOILER ALERT: As mentioned before, the Brains are all black, but this fellow is red because he’s an invention of chemists, not nature. There are impurities in the chemicals, so he’s colored differently. This is very reminiscent of the good brain/bad brain mix-up in the first FRANKENSTEIN movie, and keeping this in mind, it’s easy to see why what happens next, uh, happens next.


The other Brains, desperate for information, circle around the Red Brain, eager for his big plan. Instead, he starts sending out this odd transmission into the other Brains, that he has “conquered the Dust.” He requests that they play the National Anthem for him, to exalt him, to worship him. He even goes so far as to suggest that since he defeated the Dust, which defeated the universe, that he is greater than the universe.


An odd ploy, and one thinks he might be doing it to assuage their fear so that the Dust can end them without too much misery. But then Wandrei springs his ace in the hole: lulled into a false sense of security, the Red Brain starts pulsing hatred and death into the other Brains at a whirlwind pace, absolutely destroying the other Brains before the Dust has a chance to do it. In an orgy of mass murder/suicide, Wandrei brings about the end of existence in one of the most horrifying ways imaginable. The last two sentences alone are chilling enough to merit a place in this book. END OF SPOILERS.


Distant futures and worlds? Eh, it could be horror, it could be SF. Why not read it for yourself? It’s definitely worth the read.

[It is hard to determine where this story was first published.  It is not confirmed, but it would seem that it first appeared in the pages of WEIRD TALES.  Sadly, it is not available to be read online at this time.]