Professor Dowell's Head
English language cover
AuthorAlexander Belyaev
Original titleГолова профессора Доуэля
TranslatorCarl Engel
Cover artistAlex Dallman
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian
GenreScience fiction
PublisherKing Tide Press
Publication date
1925
Published in English
2021, 1980
Media typePrint
Pages208
ISBN979-8-9851497-0-8
Followed byThe Lord of the World 

Professor Dowell's Head is a 1925 science fiction and horror story (and later novel) by Russian author Alexander Belyaev.

Plot

Professor Dowell and his assistant surgeon Dr. Kern are working on medical problems including life support in separated body parts. Dr. Kern kills Dowell (in a set up car / asthma accident). Professor Dowell's head is now kept alive and used by Dr. Kern for extraction of scientific secrets; however, his new assistant, the medically trained Marie Loren, discovers the ploy and is dismayed; to keep her from exposing him, Kern eventually gets her imprisoned in a false lunatic asylum for undesirables. Continuing his experiments, Dr. Kern transplants the head of a young woman to a new body. That body belongs to the girlfriend of a friend of Dowell's son, who recognizes her body when the young woman flees Dr. Kern's laboratory. Together, Dowell's son and his friend free Marie Loren. Dr. Kern is anxious to announce himself as the inventor. But Dowell's son and Marie Loren help his father's head get in front of the cameras and reveal the truth. The head of professor Dowell tells all before dying. Dr. Kern, disgraced, is summarily executed by a police detective.

English translations

  • Belyaev, Alexander, Professor Dowell's Head, translated by Carl Engel, King Tide Press, Philadelphia, 2021
  • Professor Dowell's Head, New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1980, hardcover, ISBN.

Real head transplant operations were semi-successfully done in Soviet Union and United States, though not on humans, and the subjects died in less than a day.[1]

The possibility to transfer living brains into robots has been considered as a potential life-saving option for terminal patients.[2]

Film adaptations

The novel was very loosely adapted to film under the title Professor Dowell's Testament (1984) by director Leonid Menaker. The film only used the basic premise of the novel and made numerous changes to the characters and story.

The Head in the House (Chinese: 凶宅美人头), a Chinese version of film adaptation, was made by the Xi'an Film Studio in 1989.[3]

The Head (1959)

References

  1. ↑ "Head Transplant: The Truly Disturbing Truly Real Story". Vimeo. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  2. ↑ "Technology / 2045 Initiative". Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  3. ↑ "凶宅美人头 (1989)". 1905.com. Retrieved 12 January 2021.


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