“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
Published in this edition by Orion books in their Science Fiction masterworks series, Flowers for Algernon is a much loved sci-fi classic. 
Charlie Gordon has an IQ of 68. He enjoys working at his menial job at a bakery. In the evenings he attends a college for “Retarded Adults”. Here he meets Professor Nemur who is looking for a a human guinea pig for his new surgical technique to increase intelligence. The surgery has already been performed successfully on a mouse named Algernon, who is now something of a super-mouse, able to solve maze puzzles with ease.
The novel takes the form of Charlie’s own ‘progress reports’ notes (i.e. his diary). Initially the diary entries are illiterate, full of phonetic spellings and without any punctuation. Following the operation they improve dramatically as Charlie begins to expand his understanding and knowledge. It is never really explained why the researchers try this procedure out on someone of below normal intelligence. Is it because if the surgery doesn’t work they won’t be sued? Or is it because the boost to intelligence will be so dramatic that in a normal human the impact would be too unpredictable?
As Charlie’s IQ soars he quickly leaves his old life behind. He struggles to cope with the dramatic changes to his abilities and understanding. This causes emotional turmoil, and is the basis of a lot of commentary about the apparent trade off between the benefits of intelligence and blissful ignorance. I was hoping that Keyes would have something to say about how a super-intelligent human might see the world differently. Sadly Charlie is more like a troubled teenager, trashing his room, refusing to do his homework and having rows with his family. There is little else to show for his new abilities. He makes no scientific breakthroughs, discovers nothing.
Or not quite nothing. Charlie takes over the research into intelligence and discovers a flaw in the process meaning his boost in IQ is likely to be temporary. He faces this fate with a degree of resignation, even visiting the depressing institution where he is likely to end up. He tries to use the time left to him wisely, but all too quickly the old Charlie is back. Keyes reflects this degeneration poignantly through Charlie’s reversion to the fractured English used in his original notes.
Flowers for Algernon was originally a short story which Keyes later expanded into novel-form. I think the central concept – artificially enhanced intelligence – is a slight idea that probably fits better into the more straightforward format of the short story. Asking it to carry the weight of a full-length novel without any additional support is too much. Keyes doesn’t seem to know what to do with Charlie once he is super-intelligent, apart from showing him as a bit of a brat. As I mentioned in opening, this novel is much loved. People seems to have a nostalgic affection for Charlie and his mouse. So what are people seeing that I have missed? The novel has almost half a million ratings on Goodreads, scoring overall on average more than 4 (out of 5 – for comparison, Brighton Rock scores lower than 4). Reviews consistently talk about the novel being heartwarming and touching. My heart was neither touched nor warmed. I found the story profoundly predictable – there was never a moment’s doubt that Charlie’s boost in intelligence was going to be temporary. Super-intelligent Charlie is pretty unlikeable. He does nothing tangible with his enhanced powers – he learns languages, writes musical compositions, and so on, but there’s no substance to this, and the hoped-for insight into any of his areas of study never arrive. More to the point there’s no attempt to consider what super-intelligence actually means – is it just being cleverer than every one else, or is it a different level of consciousness? It was this kind of insight I was hoping for. Instead we are invited to feel sentimental for a dead mouse.
Writing in 1981, Philip K. Dick. 1981 defined sci-fi as:
“our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society—or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one—this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind.”
This of course is one of many definitions of the genre, but it is one that commanded my attention as being a serious attempt to engage with the problem of genre rather than simply provide a template for is it/isn’t it decisions. Flowers for Algernon satisfies the criteria for science fiction in many of the more narrow definitions of the genre, but fails to make the cut here if Dick’s more comprehensive and compelling definition is used. Super-intelligence doesn’t ever once hint at generating a new type of society. The surgery which improves Charlie’s intelligence is given some credibility – there is talk of enzymes and amino acids – but the researchers could just as easily have given him a “make-you-clever” pill. Nothing else changes in the world – the changes are all within Charlie and his perceptions and abilities. Every other aspect of the society is recognisable, and we are not even given a hint of the way the world might change if the surgery had been successful. In other words, I am not convinced that Flowers is even science fiction, let alone a masterwork.
The Reading Bug 