Brain In A Jar / Literature

• Left Brain, who replaces Eddie the Heart of Gold computer in And Another Thing..., is actually Zaphod's second head, put in a jar and connected to the ship.
• In Bolo Rising, the brain of the former commander of BOLO Mark XXXIII Mod HCT ("Hector") has been preserved by the alien !*!*! and connected to one of their battle fortresses. During the final battle, he manages to provide Hector and his new commander with critical data, as well as helping to subvert the !*!*! attack.
• In Boojum, Space Pirates raid a freighter that turns out to be carrying a cargo of brains in jars in a black-market trade with the below-mentioned Mi-Go. The Pirate Girl captain decides to sell them to the Mi-Go herself, only for swarms of them to turn up with lots of additional empty jars...
• Simon Wright of the Captain Future universe is an archetypal brain in a jar. A distinguished but elderly scientist, he had his brain transplanted into an artificial case before his body gave out. At the beginning of the series, the case is immobile and has to be carried around by the Robot Buddy; later, it gets an upgrade and is able to hover around under his direction.
• The brainiacs in City of Devils are one of the many many kinds of monsters in the novel.
• The Marquess of Watersford in The Curious Case Of Spring Heeled Jack ended up a brain in a jar, which was placed in the skull of an orangutan so that he can walk around. He gathers several morally ambiguous people (this timeline's versions of Darwin, Galton, Florence Nightengale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel... it's a weird book) with the intent of capturing Jack's time-suit so that he can go back in time and prevent the accident that trapped him in this state.
• Cyber Joly Drim has saint Francises — perfectly normal citizens who lead perfectly productive lives on the Internet, while just happening to be brains in jars.
• Deathstalker:
  • Psi-blockers are devices which prevent espers from using their powers in a given area. It is eventually revealed that Empress Lionstone had them created by extracting the brains from espers and sealing them in containers. The psychic screams of agony are what prevent espers from using their abilities.
  • The later series replaces the original psi-blockers with genetically cloned esper brains that can generate the same effects without the horror.
• In the novel Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak, megalomaniac millionaire W.H. Donovan crashes his private plane in the desert near the home of Dr. Patrick Cory. Dr. Cory cannot save Donovan's life, but he manages to preserve the other man's brain, placing it in a glass tank full of an electrically charged, oxygenated saline solution. The brain not only survives, but Donovan's evil will begins psychically attempting to take control of the doctor's body, until Dr. Cory's assistant finally frees him by smashing the tank with an axe.
• The first of the Doom novels, Knee-Deep in the Dead, has The Legions of Hell revealed to actually be genetically engineered scare-tactic bioweapons created by aliens who consist of huge brains in Giant Spider-like mobile carriers.
• In the Drake Maijstral series, this is a fairly common solution for people on the verge of death. They generally have full access to the futuristic equivalent of the Internet but are usually still considered legally dead. Drake's father is one, and unfortunately, having his brain transferred to a jar didn't make him less curmudgeonly or less senile. Likewise, the current Emperor of the Khosali is a brain in a jar, because he didn't bear any heirs, but he does have frozen sperm on file. Unfortunately, the sperm was lost during the confusion of the human revolt, but the Khosali haven't given up hope of finding it.
• The Dumarest of Terra series has the evil Cyclan led by an interconnected set of ancient brains in jars. They need a secret process entrusted to Dumarest to stop the brains from going mad.
• In Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez, the Brain turns out to be part of an Ancient Conspiracy of such brains called the Council of Egos who want to take over the universe. They consist of all the great minds of human history — except for Adolf Hitler, who got flushed for being too argumentative. Albert Einstein also turned down the offer, claiming the process had turned them into delusional megalomaniacs. The Council think this idea is so ridiculous that they spend a good deal of time laughing maniacally over it.
• Orson Scott Card once jokingly referred to this as a possible solution to Bean's condition in Ender's Shadow. He also expressed serious revulsion at the idea, so it is unlikely he will follow through with it.
• "Escape!": The Brain, US Robotics' supercomputer, gets its name from the fact that it uses a positronic brain as memory and processor. This brain is stored in a globe containing a non-reactive helium atmosphere, and a number of peripherals are hooked up to the globe.
  The Brain was a two-foot globe merely - one which contained within it a thoroughly conditioned helium atmosphere, a volume of space completely vibration-absent and radiation-free — and within that was that unheard-of complexity of positronic brain-paths that was The Brain. The rest of the room was crowded with the attachments that were the intermediaries between The Brain and the outside world — its voice, its arms, its sense organs.
• Conspiracy theorist Francis E Dec believed that the Computer God's Mind Control Devices are activated by brains stored in "brain bank cities" on the dark side of the moon. it is unknown whether he also believed that they take the role that everyone else believes our actual brains have
• In the world of Friends Come In Boxes by Michael G Coney, at age 40, people routinely have their brains scooped out and put in a young clone body. If there is a shortage of bodies, your brain will be put into a Friend Box, which will then be given to someone to look after. Friends can hear and speak... and that's all.
• In Glinda of Oz, the Flatheads keep their brains in cans, where they are vulnerable to theft (or confiscation by their leader, the SuDic, i.e., Supreme Dictator).
• In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the gang runs into a room with several flying brains in jars while fighting their way through the Hall of Mysteries. Ron (who's punch drunk at the time) summons one of them and everyone, students and Death Eaters alike, stop fighting and turn to stare in horror. It promptly attacks him... with tentacles made of thoughts. The Department of Mysteries is a very strange place.
• In Hyperion Cantos, this is used by the Ousters on war prisoners on Bressia as a way to torture and interrogate them. However, that in The Fall of Hyperion, it is revealed that the Ousters had no hand in the atrocities commited on Bressia and it was all a setup by the Technocore AIs to paint the highly ethical and usually peaceful Ousters as ruthless monsters.
• The Known Space short story "Becalmed in Hell" has a sans corpus fellow running a probe to the surface of Venus and contains a Shout-Out to the above book by naming the bodiless chap Donovan.
• In Last and First Men, future humans engineer giant super-intelligent brains kept in huge towers to help run the planet. Naturally these brains take over and destroy the humans. Later they engineer their own version of the human race and are naturally destroyed by their creations
• The Legends of Dune prequels to the Dune series have brain-jar villains riding around in giant war machines (just because they can), who cause the Butlerian Jihad through poor programming of their computerized inside "man" and wind up as minions/slaves themselves. Besides the Titans and the Cymeks (the aforementioned giant war machines: the Titans are the first-generation leaders, the Cymeks their Mecha-Mooks]]), are the Cogitors, humans who gave up their bodies to spend millennia contemplating the mysteries of the universe. As a group, they have declared themselves neutral in the war where humanity is being exterminated like rats. In the end, those mysteries slap them in the face, karma is a bitch.
• Ypsilon/Duktig in PC Jersilds' En Levande Själ, who had the rest of his body amputated and his memory wiped.
• An Igor in Making Money cites the invention of a "living brain extractor" as proof of a famous scientist's great achievements. Also as proof that the inventor was not mad, but what else can be expected of an Igor?
• Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick has the brain of an elderly professor transplanted into an experimental spacecraft because mechanical systems can't react fast enough. It's assumed this was lead to a loss of conscienceness, but this doesn't happen and the spacecraft takes off on its own.
• The temporary fate of Peter Thompson from My Teacher Is an Alien, as recounted during his viewpoint novel My Teacher Glows in the Dark. Played with in that the aliens did it with his permission so they could study how the human brain works and averted the whole And I Must Scream trope by inserting a receiving device in Peter's head so his brain could remotely control it (How else were they going to study it?). Peter does admit to both Susan and Duncan later as he recounts the tale that, while intellectually the whole idea was very fascinating, he couldn't get over the inherent squick of seeing his brain outside his body enough to make his own observations.
• In Nightwings by Robert Silverberg, brain jars effectively serve as information storage systems.
• Old Man's War:
  • The Colonial Union uses this as a punishment for treason, placing the brain in a life support case indefinitely. It is one of the things that some of the alien races find rather barbaric about the humans.
  • In The Human Division, it is revealed that someone is doing this to starship pilots, hooking their brains up directly to ships rigged for sneak attacks, in an effort to discredit the Colonial Union further.
  • The End of All Things: The Life of the Mind shows what happens when someone does this to a pilot who is also an expert computer programmer.
• Occasionally seen in the Perry Rhodan universe, with both disembodied human brains (though usually those are given robot bodies at the very least) and alien ones — the 'Central Plasma' that governs the mostly-robotic Posbi species is basically one giant protoplasmic brain in a jar. One arc of the series even dealt with the abduction of the titular protagonist's brain into a distant galaxy; an android brain was substituted and operated his body for nefarious purposes while he tried to find his way back. (Good thing the civilizations of said galaxy had their own brain transplant technology as part of their quest to extend life, even if it did contribute to their acute overpopulation issues; so, plenty of disembodied donor brains around there, too.)
• In Keith Laumer's A Plague Of Demons, human brains are installed in alien war machines.
• In Professor Dowells Head by Alexamder Beliaev, a scientist reanimated his dying genius colleague's head to request, trick, or beat (as needed) ideas out of him. Professor Dowell knows that his position is horrific, but is not as bitter as he himself would expect. He believes it's because he lost most of his endocrine system, so he can't get truly enraged.
• Qualia the Purple: One can be seen in chapter 11. It's Yukari's brain. The real-life example of Albert Einstein's brain is also mentioned.
• Rebuild World: Alpha mentions that individuals whose brains have the ability to interact with the Old World network are highly valuable to the government. As a result, Akira might get dissected and be reduced to a brain in a jar if anyone finds out about it.
• The Conjoiners in the Revelation Space Series tend to opt for a brain-in-jar form of treatment when they're very old. However, their "jars" are mobile, crab like devices. The Demarchists also use this for their outer system police; a pilot joins up, his brain and spinal cord is removed and inserted into a small spacecraft, with a remote-controlled drone for them to use when inspecting ships. When they're done with their term, their brain is inserted back into their body. In The Prefect, a Demarchist space station where citizens live in 24/7 virtual reality opts to put brains with the endocrine system in jars, because they found that without the endocrine system's hormones, people became very dull.
• The VUXG in Sector General are described as looking like prunes floating in bottles of liquid. To compensate for their lack of physical anatomy, they have ludicrously powerful telepathy and telekinesis.
• The back cover of The Ship Who Sang has the tagline "Helva had been born human... but only her brain had been saved." She is referred to as a "brain" or a "brainship" and regards her ship as her body, which she can't leave, but this is a case of Covers Always Lie - her body is in there, shrunken and useless except as additional life support.
  • In The Ship Who Searched while talking about prosthetics and how Long-Lived shellpeople are Dr. Kenny speculates that the day will come when softpeople like him will tuck their brains into "minishells" and install them into new bodies, and says they have the technology for most of that already but haven't worked out life support for an isolated brain yet. Tia, hearing how expensive even one full sensory limb is, is skeptical.
  • In The City Who Fought, Simeon and his brawn explain shellpeople to a Naïve Newcomer who starts out with the misconception that shellpeople are brains in jars, and the brains of criminals punished by the state at that.
• In Oblivion, the third book of the Spaceforce (2012) series, the Chairman of the Fantasia Corporation turns out to have put his body in cryogenic suspension but kept his brain alive and active, so that he can still run his company via a holographic avatar.
• The Star Diaries: Professor Corchoran from Memoirs of a Space Traveller creates AIs that have no connection to the real world — all their sensory data comes from the tapes set by him. They don't know about it, except for one who suspects. Another, slightly more Mad Scientist creates an AI copy of Corchoran's mind, as well, but this copy is aware of his situation.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Illustrated Star Wars Universe reveals that the spiderlike droids seen in Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi are mechanisms used for getting around by the B'omarr monks, who have chosen life as brains-in-jars in order to attain Fantastic Nirvana. They regard this it as the ultimate in sensory deprivation, enabling themselves to focus all their mental energy on meditation. (You can see the jars on the undersides in the film if you know to look for them.)
  • In Tales from Jabba's Palace, when a fellow Twi'lek and associate of his was slated to be fed to the Rancor, Big Fortuna had the man's brain removed and stuck in one of the spider droids first. Bib believed that, without a body, Nat was going insane. In the epilogue of this particular tale, Bib Fortuna himself is subjected to the procedure, having learned a little too much from the B'omarr Monks over the course of the procedure - enough to be judged ready for Enlightenment.
  • The X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics reveal that Bib is still able to plot and get messages out; eventually yet another Twi'lek came to carry Bib off, heaping a lot of verbal abuse and using electric torture on the brain walker in the process. Later the other Twi'lek tries to ditch the walker, but he stows away and, after the other Twi'lek is stabbed, manages to drag him back to the palace and the monks. Cut to the Twi'lek rising out of a bacta tank, and the attendant droid remarking on the loyalty of the brain droid, how it had insisted on having a restraining bolt fitted to it, and that the scars on the Twi'lek's head seemed to indicate a brain transfer. Part of a Twi'lek's brain is in his or her headtails, so a Twi'lek brain in a jar looks rather odd.
  • Galaxy of Fear: The Brain Spiders deals with this as well. Jabba found a way to profit off brain spiders by transferring brains around, putting wanted criminal brains in monk or prisoner bodies, putting the displaced brains in jars or spiders, and turning the criminal bodies in for reward. Thanks to an intended monk escaping, one criminal ends up in thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda's body. He does not like being a girl, and she doesn't like being in a spider. Fortunately, that gets reversed.
  • Once Jabba dies, the monks go batshit with brain spider-ing, having long since tired of having to walk on eggshells around Jabba, and begin enacting the procedure it to anyone who stays in the palace. Most don't want to, but one criminal, as revealed in the epilogue for Tales from Jabba's Palace, goes willingly because he was tired of living in the heat and he couldn't leave Tatooine.
• The Takeshi Kovacs series features another twist on the cyberbrain sub-variant of this trope, in the form of "cortical stacks" implanted in every person's brain that basically serve as a mirror backup of the brain in question. Stacks can be transferred to other bodies ("sleeves") at will, transmitted across networks, mounted within VR constructs or simply stored to disk.
• The space-faring slavers from Vernor Vinge's Tatja Grimms World kidnap people, remove their brains and then fit them to a computer that suppresses their personality without totally trashing their intellect. The result has computer speed and power with some human intuition and intelligence, forming a useful Wetware CPU.
• That Hideous Strength features a whole disembodied head with an overgrown brain, plus air tubes to pass "breath" through the vocal cords and mouth, allowing it to speak... and artificial drool. However, it's later revealed that the Head isn't really alive in its own right; rather, it's a tool used by malevolent Energy Beings to communicate with their pawns.
• In Too Many Curses, one of the many captives left behind when the evil wizard Margle dies accidentally is what's left of his brother Yazpib, whom Margle defeated years before. Yazpib is slightly better off than usual for this trope, as his brain shares its jar with his eyes, teeth, and tongue, which can still see and speak as they float freely in their preservative.
• Daniel Dennett's short story "Where Am I" (read it here) is about a man being separated from his brain and explores relevant philosophical ideas.
• "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) is the Trope Codifier. The alien Mi-Go plant living human brains in cylinders to transport them to other planets, which the human body apparently cannot withstand. Unlike later versions of the trope, the cylinders are not transparent.
• In William And Mary by Roald Dahl, cold and dominating husband William is dying of cancer but has his brain and one of his eyes kept alive. It's presumed that his wife, Mary (who insists to the scientist running the project that she's entitled to take him home, since he's her husband) will torment him by doing all the things he forbade her to do in front of him (drinking, smoking, partying...), now that he's helpless. A TV version of this short story explicitly shows her doing just this.
• In A Wrinkle in Time, an oversized brain referred to as IT has gained complete telepathic control of an entire planet. IT runs the planet on a heartbeat which controls everyone's life. Despite being in a novel, so great is the influence of IT that the characters know how to capitalize the name.
• Orson Scott Card's Wyrms features talking disembodied heads kept alive by some kind of leech.

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