(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[David Duffy]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2012, David Stockhoff wrote:

> I'd put lobotomies, including chemical ones, in the same indefensible class 
> as amputations, castrations, sterilizations, and other mutilations: even 
> /less/ defensible than execution.

Reading this, I wondered: does neurosurgery appear more often in Gene 
Wolfe's work than that of other writers of the era?  I have recently 
reread Bernard Wolfe's _Limbo_, where (not really a spoiler) the 
inhabitants of Tapioca Island practiced trepanation and then lobotomy 
(with the protagonist's help) as the cure of antisocial behaviour for 1-2 
centuries.  But I don't see it in SF of the 50-60s, or in other fiction - 
_One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ is an exception.

Cheers, David Duffy.

PS I don't think _Dr Island_ is an allusion to the Bernard Wolfe ;)