Drug themes in science fiction
Part 2
_Primitive Period_ circa 1900–1935. Science fiction was then, at least in the specialist magazines, a crude and artless form, and the stories tend to be skeletal and formula-ridden. Typically, a scientist working in secret (often a mad scientist) devises a drug whose effects operate on the mind in some extreme fashion, and through secret experiments demonstrates the perils of this drug. Examples: Barnes, Binder, Fearn, Gatter, Hall, etc.
_Predictive Period_ circa 1935–1965. As the genre matured, authors began to seek greater complexity of style and structure in their fiction, and to achieve greater thematic perception. The stories of this period characteristically attempted to consider the most wide-ranging consequences of drug use; the authors themselves typically had had no experience with drugs other than alcohol, and based their ideas partly on imaginative projection and partly on the reports of such early experimenters with drugs as Baudelaire and deQuincy. Examples: Guin, Pohl, Collins, Huxley (1932), MacDonald, Hartley, Gunn.
_Contemporary Period_ circa 1965 to date. With drug use now a matter for the news media as well as for solitary experimenters and literateurs, experience with mind-altering phenomena grows; many authors now sample marijuana and LSD and use their experiences as a basis for projections of trends. The changes in society are presumed to be permanent and become fixtures in stories, so that characters in a story set in 1999 use drugs like marijuana and LSD as casually as characters in a futuristic story written in 1950 would use cigarettes and alcohol. Drug use is taken for granted in the future, and new uses are postulated as an outgrowth of a richness of drug experience not available to earlier science-fiction writers, who had neither the personal experience nor the wealth of published data that present-day writers may draw upon. Examples: Aldiss, Spinrad, Silverberg, Dick, Anderson, Disch, Moorcock, Brunner.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMITIVE PERIOD
(1900–1935)
Author: Pratt, Fletcher and Lester, Irvin
Title: The Roger Bacon formula
Journal: _Amazing Stories_, Vol. 3, No. 10, 940–948
Publisher: Experimenter Publishing Company, New York
Date: January 1929
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Medievalist rediscovers lost manuscript in which Roger Bacon provides the formula for _mandragordeum_, a drug that induces “transportation of the mind.” Taking it, the experimenter finds himself freed from his body and journeying to Venus; a vivid vision of life on the second planet ends only when the drug wears off. Fearing addiction, he never tries the drug again, though he admits a temptation to more tripping.
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Author: Harris, Clare Winger
Title: The diabolical drug
Journal: _Amazing Stories_, Vol. 4, No. 2, 156–161
Publisher: Experimenter Publishing Company, New York
Date: May 1929
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: Scientist develops a chemical which, by retarding the voltage of the brain’s electrical activity, halts the aging process. An experiment on a human is performed, the subject being the scientist’s beloved, who is six years older than he is; he intends to hold her at the same age until he has caught up. She sinks into a kind of stasis. Unable to perfect an antidote, he injects himself also, and the two of them enter a strange suspended animation in which extreme psychological effects of the metabolic slowdown manifest themselves.
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Author: Huxley, Aldous
Title: Brave New World
Publisher: Chatto & Windus, London, England
Pages: 214 pp.
Date: 1932
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as panaceas
Annotation: In mechanized, standardized utopian world of the future, where human beings are synthetically produced in incubators and conditioned for optimum social stability, a drug called _soma_ serves as the utopiate of the masses, distracting and tranquilizing those who might otherwise become restless in their too-comfortable lives.
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Author: Keller, David H.
Title: The literary corkscrew
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 5, No. 8, 867–873
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: March 1934
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as intelligence enhancers
Annotation: Satiric story. A professional writer discovers he can write only when in physical pain, and requires his wife to drive a corkscrew into his back to get him started. But the pain of the corkscrew is impossible to sustain for long, and they seek medical help. The doctor they consult discovers that it isn’t the pain itself but rather certain hormones secreted as a response to the pain that encourages literary production, and synthesizes a drug that makes writing easier. Doctor takes his own drug and writes a best-seller.
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Author: Fearn, John Russell
Title: He never slept
Journal: _Astounding Stories_, Vol. 13, No. 4, 56–67
Publisher: Street & Smith, New York
Date: June 1934
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as intelligence-enhancers
Annotation: Scientist concocts a protein-based drug that frees the subject from all need to sleep. Narrator takes the drug and enters into a condition of enhanced perceptivity in which he is capable of penetrating the visionary recesses of his own mind and visiting the dream-creating processes. The experience eventually exhausts him, but unable to give up use of the drug, he looks forward to death as the only release from its effects.
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Author: Herbert, Benson
Title: The control drug
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 6, No. 6, 669–675
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: November 1934
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: Scientist invents a xenon-derived drug that seems to offer a “paradise” effect—brief glimpses of the Divine, freedom from the material body, etc. But further research shows its dread long-term effects: “The stuff doesn’t exalt you or energize you.... What it does is to release the emotions from a lifetime of civilized control and suppression. It takes the bonds off secret desires. Its subtle physiological action leaves you with no control whatever.” Naturally he destroys the drug and takes his own life.
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Author: Hamilton, Edmond
Title: The truth gas
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 6, No. 5, 1060–1071
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: February 1935
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: A scientist who believes that all sin and crime stem from deceptiveness perfects and releases into the atmosphere a drug that “causes a short-circuit between the brain’s thought-centers and its motor-centers of speech” so that lying becomes impossible. The resulting compulsive honesty leads to impossible social situations as the whole veneer of tact and diplomacy vanishes; it becomes necessary to devise and release an antidote.
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Author: Bartel, Philip J.
Title: The elixir of progress
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 6, No. 11, 1286–1304
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: April 1935
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: Satiric story of the quest in the year 3903 for rediscovery of the lost ancient drug that provided stimulation and energy and delight to early man—coffee.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREDICTIVE PERIOD
(1935–1965)
Author: Smith, Clark Ashton
Title: The Plutonian drug
Journal: _Amazing Stories_, Vol. 9, No. 5, 41–48
Publisher: Teck Publications, New York
Date: September 1934
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Among the many drugs brought back to Earth by space explorers is _Plutonium_, a powder from Pluto that produces a hashish-like derangement of time-perception, permitting the user to transform time into space and go on psychedelic voyages. The subject penetrates five or six hours into the past, an ineffable experience that ends with a vision of his own death soon fulfilled in reality.
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Author: Barnes, Arthur K.
Title: Emotion solution
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 7, No. 8, 955–963
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: April 1936
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: A scientist who feels that emotions are a hindrance to the full development of intelligence perfects a solution that destroys the “emotional centers” of the brain; he infiltrates it into the Southern California water system. The resulting emotionless society is lifeless and without energy, not at all what the scientist envisioned, and he feels guilt for having transformed millions of people into dull robots.
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Author: Gatter, George F.
Title: Emotion gas
Journal: _Wonder Stories_, Vol. 7, No. 8, 967–971
Publisher: Continental Publications, New York
Date: April 1936
Format: Short story
Descriptors: Drugs as mind-controllers; Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: Unscrupulous theatrical producers enhance the box-office appeal of their comedy by surreptitiously dosing the audience with a gas that induces euphoria; they leave convinced they have seen an extraordinarily funny show, and business booms, until one night an overdose is given that amplifies not only happy feelings but passing moments of depression, causing everybody to leave in a black despondent mood that kills the show.
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Author: Coblentz, Stanton A.
Title: The glowworm flower
Journal: _Astounding Stories_, Vol. 17, No. 4, 22–29
Publisher: Street & Smith Publications, New York
Date: June 1936
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: A pioneering space exploration voyage brings back, by accident, spores of an extraterrestrial plant that sprouts on Earth. The flower of this plant gives off a fragrance that induces intoxication, coma, and opium-like visions. Tripping on glowworm-flower fragrance becomes addictive for many of Earth’s finest minds, though lesser folk are relatively immune. The plant is eradicated everywhere, possession of it is made illegal, and all space missions are banned lest spaceships again be contaminated with the sinister spores.
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Author: Binder, Eando
Title: The hormone menace
Journal: _Thrilling Wonder Stories_, Vol. 8, No. 1, 34–47
Publisher: Beacon Magazines, Inc., New York
Date: August 1936
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: Villainous scientist, using extracts derived from endocrine secretions, transforms human beings into mindless puppets of abnormal strength and stature or of extraordinary mental abilities (i.e., photographic memories). Heroic underground agent penetrates his remote laboratory and puts an end to the research.
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Author: Wellman, Manly Wade
Title: Dream-dust from Mars
Journal: _Thrilling Wonder Stories_, Vol. 11, No. 1, 14–28
Publisher: Better Publications, Inc., New York
Date: February 1938
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as panaceas
Annotation: The spores of a Martian lichen are an agreeable stimulant to Martians of the 28th century but throw Earthmen into deep trances in which they experience prolonged ecstatic dreams. The _dream-dust_ becomes immensely popular on Earth and is outlawed when everyone seems headed for the oblivion it provides.
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Author: Hall, Charles F.
Title: The time drug
Journal: _Tales of Wonder_, Vol. 1, No. 5, 62–73
Publisher: The World’s Work, Surrey, England
Date: Winter 1938
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Scientist perfects a drug, mixing together cactus alkaloids and kava root, which creates powerful psychedelic effects and allows the experimenter to float backward in time. Backward explorations continue until the researcher reaches the creation of the universe, with grave consequences for him.
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Author: Kyle, David A.
Title: Golden nemesis
Journal: _Stirring Science Stories_, Vol. 1, No. 1, 28–34
Publisher: Albing Publications, New York
Date: February 1941
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Aware that most of the capacity of the human brain remains unused, an experimenter devises a drug that will raise him to superhuman intelligence by giving him access to his entire brain. He is transformed into a genius by the drug, but only for a brief, intense “trip,” which after a few days so exhausts him that, “nerves on fire,” he dies of heart failure. The story is a remarkable anticipation of extreme LSD effects.
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Author: Pohl, Frederik
Title: What to do until the analyst comes
In: _Alternating Currents_
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Pages: 143–154
Date: 1956
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as panaceas
Annotation: Narrator is an advertising man who tells how, after a cigarettes-and-lung-cancer scare, researchers discover a cheap, allegedly harmless and non-addictive euphoric drug, and it goes on the market in chewing-gum form as a replacement for cigarettes. Soon everyone is chewing _Cheery-Gum_ except the narrator, who is allergic to it; and though the drug is theoretically non-addictive, it makes everyone so high that no one wants to give it up—leading to a dazed and tranquilized society in which everyone is euphoric and indolent and everyone maintains that he could kick the _Cheery-Gum_ habit on a moment’s notice, if he had any reason to do so—which he doesn’t.
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Author: Slesar, Henry
Title: I remember oblivion
Journal: _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, Vol. 30, No. 3, 36–43
Publisher: Mercury Press, New York
Date: March 1966
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: A technique has been devised for literal brainwashing of criminals, i.e., the total eradication through chemotherapy of memory, and the reconstruction, using drugs and “narco-hypnosis,” of a new non-criminal personality within the existing body. The narrative cuts from the conversation of two scientists using the technique to the stream-of-consciousness of a rehabilitated criminal who, breaking through his conditioning, regains access to his memories and commits suicide in his guilt.
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Author: Keller, David H.
Title: The abyss
In: _The Solitary Hunters and the Abyss_
Publisher: New Era Publishers, Philadelphia
Pages: 108–265
Date: 1948
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: A scientist isolates _XYZ_, a chemical present in the minds of psychotics, and, purely as an experiment, doses all of New York City with it by distributing it in the form of chewing gum. Mass psychosis results; civilization collapses and the eight million guinea pigs revert to a sort of Roman culture, with barbaric gladiatorial games, an emperor, mass brutality, new religions. After thirty days the drug wears off and the victims fall into coma and awaken unharmed.
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Author: MacDonald, John D.
Title: Trojan horse laugh
Journal: _Astounding Science Fiction_, Vol. 43, No. 6, 73–111
Publisher: Street & Smith Publications, New York
Date: August 1949
Format: Short novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind controllers
Annotation: An endocrinologist has charted a monthly human cycle of emotional peaks and depressions, and, for the sake of greater efficiency and harmony in society, has developed a drug that will control and adjust the cycle so that everyone treated will peak or drop at the same time. This works well during the high part of the cycle, but once the lows set in, mass hysteria develops among the inoculated populace, there is a wave of suicides, and a chain reaction of interlocking depressions virtually destroys society.
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Author: Williams, Robert Moore
Title: The elixir of peace
Journal: _Amazing Stories_, Vol. 23, No. 12, 124–131
Publisher: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, Chicago
Date: December 1949
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: Comic story of a tranquilizing drug devised to make animals such as lions tame enough to use in movies. The demonstration leads to complications, and a furious movie director is “tamed” as well by surreptitious use of the drug.
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Author: Heinlein, Robert A.
Title: _The Puppet Masters_
Publisher: Doubleday & Co., New York
Pages: 219 pp.
Date: 1951
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: The Earth has been invaded by slug-like parasitic beings that attach themselves to men’s backs and dominate their minds and bodies. The protagonists, Sam Nivin and Mary, are members of a secret security agency fighting the invaders. In the middle of the struggle they decide to get married; but because they can only spare 24 hours for their honeymoon, they inject themselves with _tempus_, a drug analogous to speed, which stretches subjective time for them so that they feel they are experiencing a month-long honeymoon.
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Author: Morrison, William (Pseud. for Joseph Samachson)
Title: The addicts
Journal: _Galaxy Science Fiction_, Vol. 3, No. 4, 122–131
Publisher: Galaxy Publishing Corporation, New York
Date: January 1952
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: Husband and wife are lighthouse-keepers on a lonely asteroid between Earth and Mars. Husband has become addicted to _marak_, a euphoric drug that keeps him in a constant state of good nature and well-being. This makes meaningful conversation between him and wife impossible, since he is so agreeable that all discussions trail off immediately, and she is growing irritable for lack of stimulating company. Husband therefore decides secretly to give his wife addictive dose of drug.
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Author: Smith, George O.
Title: _Hellflower_
Publisher: Abelard Press, New York
Pages: 264 pp.
Date: 1953
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as sensation-enhancers
Annotation: On Ganymede, moon of Jupiter, grows the gardenia-like plant from which _hellflower_, also known as _love lotus_, is extracted—a narcotic which heightens sensations and other sensory stimuli and creates psychological addiction through enhancement of pleasure—with women the chief victims. Story concerns the traffic in this and related drugs and the attempts of a government agent of the future to intercept it.
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Author: Devaux, Pierre and Viot, H. G.
Title: The stolen minute
Journal: _Science Fiction Plus_, Vol. 1, Nos. 4 and 5, 44–61, 42–62
Publisher: Gernsback Publications, Inc., New York
Date: June and August 1953
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: A French molecular physicist develops a drug known as _hexostyromolybdenum_, HSM, which has the property of vastly increasing the human metabolism. Motion, body speed, the rate of living, and other functions are accelerated 100,000 times. Protagonists make use of HSM to achieve desired political goals.
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Author: Phillips, Rog (Pseud. for Roger Philip Graham)
Title: The yellow pill
Journal: _Astounding Science Fiction_, Vol. 62, No. 2, 51–61
Publisher: Street & Smith Publications, New York
Date: October 1958
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as reality-testers
Annotation: Psychiatrist encounters a patient who has committed murder and who has the delusion that he was on board a spaceship, defending himself against lizard-men from Venus, at the time of the killing. Patient totally denies the reality of actual world, and tells psychiatrist to take a _yellow pill_ that will awaken him to the true reality of the spaceship-world. Psychiatrist is amused by concept of a yellow pill that can bring one out of a delusion; but then he finds a bottle of yellow pills in his locker and the story becomes an exploration of ambiguous levels of reality, with the pills serving as conduits between one “real” world and the other.
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Author: Hartley, L. P.
Title: _Facial Justice_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 263 pp.
Date: 1960
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: The scene is the not very distant future, after the Third World War. Nine tenths of the human race has been destroyed and the survivors are ruled by a benevolent dictator who reduces conflict situations by imposing an enforced equality: personalities are standardized, numbers are used for names, women undergo plastic surgery so that none will seem too beautiful or too ugly. This dreary homogenized state is kept under control by dosing the citizens daily with a sedative-like bromide to which most people have become addicted; it lowers vitality and reduces nonconformity.
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Author: Gunn, James
Title: _The Joy Makers_
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York
Pages: 160 pp.
Date: 1961
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: Under the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 2003, hedonism is the law of the land. The function of government, it has been decided, is “the preservation and promotion of the temporary happiness of its citizens.” Gloom is outlawed and happiness is mandatory. It is attained through mental disciplines, through mechanical regulation of the metabolism, and through the free use of drugs—notably mescaline, “neo-heroin,” various alkaloids, and certain futuristic euphorics.
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Author: Huxley, Aldous
Title: _Island_
Publisher: Harper & Row, New York
Pages: 295 pp.
Date: 1962
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: This Utopian novel, written thirty years after Huxley’s anti-drug _Brave New World_ and after his own experiments with LSD and mescaline, depicts another ideal commonwealth centering on the use of drugs: but in place of _Brave New World’s_ mind-deadening _soma_, the citizens of _Island_ use _moksha_, a hallucinogen very similar in effect to LSD, which induces mystical visions and intensifies religious experience.
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Author: Burgess, Anthony
Title: _A Clockwork Orange_
Publisher: W. W. Norton, New York
Pages: 160 pp.
Date: 1963
Format: Novel
Descriptors: Drugs as mind-controllers; Drugs as mind-expanders