Great book and worth a read if you can get your hands on it. I'll let you read the summaries but here's the bottom line:
Short, well written, and VERY much worth reading for handlingly of the main premise! Not a "shoot 'em up, bang, bang" by any means, but certainly a book that will stay with you for a long time.
Short, well written, and VERY much worth reading for handlingly of the main premise! Not a "shoot 'em up, bang, bang" by any means, but certainly a book that will stay with you for a long time.
Brain Wave was my first Poul Anderson book, and it was quite good. Poul Anderson did a masterful job of capturing the issues that could arise if everyone, humans and animals, all had a sudden increase in intelligence. How would governments and societies reform themselves? How would we learn to cohabitate with other intelligent species, like cows, horses, and pigs? How would we convince people to take care of menial, laborious tasks, such as garbage collection? How soon would we populate the stars? And the book ends with a sweet and hopeful scene.
The book made me mad. Brain Wave was Andersons first novel and he makes writing appear as childs play. The style is like other classic Sci-fi writers, Sturgeon, Van Vogt and Simack. The book actually made me sweat psychologically; I was concerned for my health and the well being of the characters in Andersons book. Brain Wave, I suppose, is a Science Fiction Psychological Thriller. Needless to say it was a good read, as good as any I've read on the 501 list. It was written in 1958 so my initial description of Animal Farm on Acid was a bit premature but it's still an illustrative description.
A story of what happens to a world gone super intelligent? A science fiction master Poul Anderson explores what happens when the next stage of evolution is thrust upon humanity and animals. As Earth passes out of a magnetic field that has suppressed intelligence for eons, the mental capacity for all mammals increases exponentially, radically changing the structures of society. 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. ........ A mentally impaired farm worker finds himself capable of more delicate and intelligent thoughts than he ever dreamed. A young boy on holiday manages to discern the foundations of calculus before breakfast. Animals that were seen as livestock and pets can now communicate clearly with their owners and one another. And an already brilliant physics researcher now uses his boundless intellect to bring humankind to the stars, even as his wife plunges into an existential crisis. For all of them, the world will never be the same.
