Brain WavePaul Anderson
Brain Wave
by Paul Anderson · first published 1970
7mentions
3recommended by
5HN commenters
2020–2025first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Long time ago I read a novel called Brain Wave by Paul Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave (it predates Flowers for Algernon by about 10 years). It has a similar theme of suddenly acquired intelligence but for the whole planet. I you…
on “Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]” ↗I always kinda avoid scifi stories about super-intelligent beings. There's no way one could write about what they'd be like. But I make one exception - Brain Wave by Poul Anderson. In it, ordinary people become much more intelligent. Their speech patterns change into very few words, because a more intelligent listener would be better at inferring meaning from the…
on “Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]” ↗Another interesting story featuring enhanced intelligence is Poul Anderson's novel "Brain Wave". Briefly, there is an energy damping field that projects in a beam from something near the center of our galaxy. One of the effects of this field is to slow down the speed of neural activity. The Sun's…
on “Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]” ↗> Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons. Hah, I've noticed that for years. Anderson's "Brain Wave", however, is a decent attempt at what more intelligent people would be like.
on “Tomorrow people: For a century, it felt like telepathy was around the corner” ↗This speculation is addressed in the novel Brainwave, by Poul Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave) It's pretty dated regarding the roles of women and men, but the ideas are very interesting nevertheless. One of the big insights is that many people might not be ready to operate at full potential -…
on “Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?” ↗Poul Anderson in "Brain Wave" had a most interesting take on what increased intelligence would look like. People said less and less to each other, but conveyed more meaning.
on “Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is” ↗…behavior which are obvious nonsense. I'm happy at work because I'm surrounded by people smarter, more motivated, and more conscientious than I am. Outside of work, well, some days I dream that Anderson's Brain Wave would come true, the Earth would move out of some magical interstellar intelligence-suppressing field, and everyone's IQ would quintuple overnight.
on “Why aren't smart people happier?” ↗