Flowers For Algernon takes the form of a series of entries from the journal of Charlie Gordon, the subject of an experiment in artificially increasing intelligence. In the beginning, Charlie is a gentle but intellectually retarded young man who works in a menial job. Chosen to participate in the experiment, Charlie slowly begins to develop. Eventually he reaches genius level and is as much at home with advanced calculus as he is with the more abstruse arguments of philosophy. Unfortunately, the experiment is deeply flawed. As the genius Charlie records, 'Artificially induced intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase.' In other words, Charlie is doomed to plunge back into the pit of mental incompetence from which the experimenters have briefly dragged him. His fate is foreshadowed in that of the laboratory mouse, Algernon, an earlier victim of the scientists' attempts to improve on nature, which regresses before his eyes.

Much of the brilliance of the book lies in the skill with which Keyes's prose style mirrors the different levels of intelligence possessed at different times by his central character. We follow Charlie in his own words as he moves from the stumbling, child-like language of his early diary entries through the dawning of his super-intelligence to the awful realization of his inevitable destiny. The novel had its roots in an acclaimed short story that Keyes wrote in the 1950s but the longer version takes the original idea and expands it into a gripping narrative of a mind gradually becoming aware of the disintegration that awaits it. There have been many other depictions of enhanced human intelligence in SF over the decades, and it remains a potent theme in contemporary writing, but few have achieved the moving, relentless simplicity of Keyes's story.

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