Drug themes in science fiction
Part 3
Annotation: Alex is a juvenile delinquent of the near future, who routinely uses such drugs as _synthemesc_ or _drencrom_ that are sold in neighborhood “milk bars” for hallucinogenic boosts. After committing a particularly atrocious assault, Alex is arrested and sentenced to a kind of brainwash reconditioning. With the aid of drugs and hypnotherapy he is conditioned against violence and turned loose to become a useful citizen.
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Author: Buck, Doris Pitkin
Title: Come where my love lies dreaming
Journal: _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, Vol. 26, No. 2, 113–126
Publisher: Mercury Press, New York
Date: February 1964
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as panaceas
Annotation: The quickest refuge from the horrors of life in 21st century Washington, D. C., is the use of _detenser_ pills. The latest brand is Protoceratops Tabs, which mentally transport the user to the Mesozoic Era and create the illusion that he or she is a dinosaur. The story, gently comic in tone, follows the adventures of a woman who takes the dinosaur trip and comes face-to-face not only with prehistoric beasts but with her own inner problems.
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Author: Purdom, Tom
Title: Greenplace
Journal: _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, Vol. 27, No. 5, 5–16
Publisher: Mercury Press, New York
Date: November 1964
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as intelligence enhancers
Annotation: Protagonist is a psychologist doing political field-testing on behalf of a Congressman running for re-election c. 1980. As he prepares to enter a suburban district controlled by his candidate’s powerful opponent, he doses himself with _MST_, a newly invented psychic energizer that “multiplied the powers of observation and the rate and quality of thought by a factor somewhere between three and seven.” Under the influence of _MST_ he is able to detect the frightening psychological techniques by which the suburb is held in control.
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Author: McCombs, Larry and White, Ted
Title: The peacock king
Journal: _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, Vol. 29, No. 5, 23–36
Publisher: Mercury Press, New York
Date: November 1965
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: The United States is planning its first expedition into interstellar space, using a radical space-drive that permits faster-than-light travel. Preliminary experiments have shown that a faster-than-light trip will have grave psychological impact on the crew, and therefore LSD is used as part of the training discipline for the crew (a man and a woman). Through acid experiences they make themselves capable of handling the interstellar jump through hyperspace.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
(1965–Present)
Author: Guin, Wyman
Title: Beyond bedlam
In: _Living Way Out_
Publisher: Avon Books, New York
Pages: 155–208
Date: 1967 (1951 First Issue)
Format: Short novel
Descriptor: Drugs as panaceas
Annotation: During the late 20th century drugs were developed to aid schizophrenics by permitting their warring inner personalities to live side by side, controlling the body alternately. By the following century the element of schizophrenia is recognized in all persons and it becomes mandatory to use the drugs, giving everyone a prime ego and an alternate ego, in fact separate persons, who undergo drug-induced shifts of dominance every five days. The author explores the concept of ego-shift by following the fortunes of a number of protagonists whose doubled personalities engage in complex interactions.
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Author: Collins, Hunt (Pseud. of Evan Hunter)
Title: _Tomorrow and Tomorrow_
Publisher: Pyramid Books, New York
Pages: 190 pp.
Date: 1956
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as reality-testers
Annotation: The novel, set in a near-future Earth dominated by advertising and television, describes the conflict between two groups of differing social philosophies: the Vikes, who advocate vicarious pleasure and indulge in heroin-like narcotics to escape from reality, and the Rees, or Realists, an austere Puritan movement hostile to all mind-altering substances.
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Author: Dick, Philip K.
Title: We can remember it for you wholesale
Journal: _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, Vol. 30, No. 4, 3–16
Publisher: Mercury Press, Inc., New York
Date: April 1966
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: A technique is developed by which, using a hypnotic drug called _narkidrine_, false memories can be implanted in a human brain. The memory-implant technique can be used to provide the vicarious illusion of pleasurable experience, but also—as the story unfolds—we see that it can be used for purposes of political intrigue.
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Author: Dick, Philip K.
Title: _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 278 pp.
Date: 1965
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: An illegal hallucinogen, _Can-D_, allows Earth colonists on Mars, Venus, and other nearby worlds to stave off the crushing boredom of daily life by permitting them to enter a highly schematicized common fantasy world where they share in the adventures of two imaginary lovers who are larger-than-life Hollywood dream-figures. Complications ensue when a competitive reality-destroying drug, _Chew-Z_, is introduced surreptitiously by beings from another solar system.
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Author: Dick, Philip K.
Title: _Now Wait for Last Year_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 214 pp.
Date: 1966
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: In the war-torn world of the 21st century, Americans escape from the horrors of their time by addictive use of _JJ-180_, a drug that allows the consciousness to detach from present time and return to earlier eras, or even to travel forward in time. The protagonist, initially attempting only to deal with his wife’s addiction to the time-travel drug, eventually becomes entangled in global politics and the progress of the interstellar war as he himself, under the influence of _JJ-180_, oscillates backward and forward in time.
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Author: Harrison, Harry
Title: _Make Room! Make Room!_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 213 pp.
Date: 1966
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as euphorics
Annotation: The year is 1999 and the population of New York City is 35 million. In this hideously overcrowded society marijuana and LSD are the chief means of escape from stress, and their use is far more pervasive than it is today. Filmed as _Soylent Green_.
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Author: Aldiss, Brian W.
Title: The night that all time broke loose
In: _Dangerous Visions_ (Edited by Harlan Ellison)
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 151–160
Date: 1967
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Comic story about _time gas_, piped through mains to suburban houses the way heating gas is distributed. Using _time gas_, subscribers can dial themselves back to any period in their lives they prefer to re-experience. Story concerns a break in the gas main that floods the region with _time gas_ and touches off a great gusher that carries mankind back into prehistoric times, with dinosaurs imminent as the time-effects grow more powerful.
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Author: Anderson, Chester
Title: _The Butterfly Kid_
Publisher: Pyramid Books, New York
Pages: 190 pp.
Date: 1967
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: In this comic novel, set among the drug-using counter-culturists of Greenwich Village, trouble starts when _Reality Pills_ become available—a “projective hallucinogen” that creates hallucinations visible not only to the user but to those around him. It develops that _Reality Pills_ have been invented and distributed by blue lobster-like beings from another planet in order to facilitate their conquest of Earth—a conquest ultimately thwarted by the dedication of a fearless band of hippies.
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Author: Dick, Philip K. and Nelson, Ray
Title: _The Ganymede Takeover_
Publisher: Ace Books, New York
Pages: 157 pp.
Date: 1967
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: In this satiric novel intelligent worm-like beings from Ganymede, moon of Jupiter, conquer the Earth despite the best efforts of such individuals as Rudolph Balkani, Chief of the Bureau of Psychedelic Research, who has been working on a mind-blocking weapon. The world that Ganymede conquered is in fact devoted on all levels to the use of psychedelics, and the novel raises questions about the nature of “reality” as the action unfolds.
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Author: Lupoff, Richard A.
Title: _One Million Centuries_
Publisher: Lancer Books, New York
Pages: 352 pp.
Date: 1967
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: A man of the twentieth century is thrust forward in time to the world of the unimaginably distant future. As he explores the civilization he finds himself among, he learns that the people of the era habitually chew _samra_, a hallucinogenic drug, and a woman he meets takes him on a _samra_ trip. It is a soaring visionary experience in which he perceives the birth and death of the solar system.
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Author: Spinrad, Norman
Title: Carcinoma angels
In: _Dangerous Visions_ (Edited by Harlan Ellison)
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 489–497
Date: 1967
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Protagonist suffering from terminal cancer seeks remission of disease. With the aid of massive doses of various hallucinogenic agents he reaches an ostensible mental state in which he is capable of entering his own body to do psychic battle with the cancer cells. In series of metaphorical contests he destroys the invaders, but is unable to return to real-world consciousness and is remanded to mental institution, trapped within his own body.
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Author: Wilson, Colin
Title: _The Mind Parasites_
Publisher: Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin
Pages: 222 pp.
Date: 1967
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: A research project involving heavy doses of mescaline and LSD leads to perceptions revealing the existence of invisible “mind parasites,” alien invaders who have long controlled and influenced human life. With the aid of the drug, experimenters unleash mental powers with which to combat the invaders.
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Author: Disch, Thomas
Title: _Camp Concentration_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 184 pp.
Date: 1968
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as intelligence-enhancers
Annotation: The novel is the journal of a U.S. political prisoner of the near future who is assigned to observe and record the progress of an experiment in which volunteer prisoners at a secret internment camp are treated with _Pallidine_, an intelligence-enhancing drug derived from the organism that causes syphilis. In the course of nine months the drug turns the prisoners into supermen of extraordinary mental capacity while destroying their bodies with disease.
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Author: Herbert, Frank
Title: _The Santaroga Barrier_
Publisher: Berkley Books, New York
Pages: 255 pp.
Date: 1968
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: An outsider penetrates a remote California valley inhabited by reclusive farmers who discourage all contact with strangers. He discovers that they have built a society based on consumption of _Jaspers_—a psychedelic drug going far beyond acid in its effects, fostering a sense of community through its ability to allow takers to perceive the ultimate relationships linking all aspects of the universe. He is drawn into the valley society and becomes part of it.
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Author: Moorcock, Michael
Title: _The Final Programme_
Publisher: Avon Books, New York
Pages: 191 pp.
Date: 1968
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Satiric comic novel of near future, in which hallucinogenic drugs are used in a variety of ways—as, for example, _LSD gas_, employed as a protective device and discharged to muddle the minds of burglars breaking into a mansion. More conventional use of drugs (i.e., as euphorics and hallucinogens) is common in the book.
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Author: Silverberg, Robert
Title: How it was when the past went away
In: _Earth’s Other Shadow_ (By Robert Silverberg)
Publisher: New American Library, New York
Pages: 66–127
Date: 1973 (First Issue 1969)
Format: Short novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-injurers
Annotation: One day in 2003 an unknown malcontent dumps an amnesia-producing drug into the water system of San Francisco. Within a few hours virtually everyone in the city has lost his memory, and the effects of the memory drug linger for several days, causing great complications. Story follows the reactions of several characters to the varied effects of sudden amnesia. As story ends things are returning to normal for most people, but one unstable individual has obtained a supply of the drug and is preaching its use in a new cult of oblivion.
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Author: Spinrad, Norman
Title: _Bug Jack Barron_
Publisher: Walker Books, New York
Pages: 327 pp.
Date: 1969
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: In the closing years of the 20th century the work of a foundation for life-extension research becomes the center of fierce political controversy. The tensions growing out of the search for immortality are depicted against the background of a near-future world in which marijuana and the psychedelic drugs are legal and widely consumed.
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Author: Aldiss, Brian W.
Title: _Barefoot in the Head_
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, New York
Pages: 281 pp.
Date: 1970
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-injurers
Annotation: In Europe of the near future, political tensions have led to the bombing of the entire continent by the Arab state of Kuwait with psychedelic weapons—odorless, tasteless, and enormously potent. In the aftermath of the war all of Europe finds itself on a perpetual LSD trip, since the drug’s aftereffects prove ineradicable. Industrial society breaks down, reason becomes extinct, and the novel itself dissolves into a Joycean verbal phantasmagoria as the old society gives way to one in which insanity is the norm.
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Author: Silverberg, Robert
Title: Sundance
In: _The Cube Root of Uncertainty_ (By Robert Silverberg)
Publisher: Collier Books, New York
Pages: 219–239
Date: 1970
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Protagonist is part of a team of Earth men annihilating a semi-intelligent alien race on an extrasolar world prior to colonization of the planet. Protagonist is emotionally disturbed—his American Indian ancestry makes him bitter about the genocide he feels is taking place—and his sympathies toward the aliens lead him to take part in their rites and to consume a hallucinogenic plant, used by them, that induces synesthesia and a sense of racial communion.
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Author: Vonnegut, Kurt
Title: Welcome to the monkey house
In: _Welcome to the Monkey House_ (By Kurt Vonnegut)
Publisher: Delacorte Press, New York
Pages: 28–47
Date: 1970
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-controllers
Annotation: At a time when the world’s population is 17 billion, compulsory ethical birth control comes into effect. On pain of fine, everyone must take birth control pills three times a day. The pills do not interfere with reproduction, but, by making people numb from the waist down, “take every bit of pleasure out of sex.”
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Author: Benford, James
Title: Pulse
Journal: _Fantastic Science Fiction_, Vol. 20, No. 6, 22–25
Publisher: Ultimate Publishing Company, New York
Date: August 1971
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Young woman describes her LSD trip to her psychotherapist: a vision of another world (she thinks it is the moon) marked by strange geological formations and flora. He listens patiently to her descriptions of this obviously illusory experience, but she maintains the drug actually transported her, and as she goes on talking he is drawn into the illusion and finds himself mysteriously transported (without the aid of the drug) to the world of her narrative.
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Author: Lafferty, R. A.
Title: Sky
In: _New Dimensions One_, (Edited by Robert Silverberg)
Publisher: Doubleday and Co., New York
Pages: 149–161
Date: 1971
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Protagonists in future civilization make use of _Sky_, a drug derived from an amanita mushroom. Stated powers of this drug are to provide sensations of mastery and union-with-cosmos, especially during parachute drops. Protagonists attain successively more ecstatic states in series of _Sky_-enhanced parachute drops, until, seeking the perfect high, they deliberately fail to use their parachutes on one _Sky_ trip and, after a descent marked by moments of stunning ecstasy, perish as they hit the ground.
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Author: Panshin, Alexei
Title: How can we sink when we can fly?
In: _Four Futures_, a science-fiction anthology
Publisher: Hawthorn Books, New York
Pages: 94–130
Date: 1971
Format: Short novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: At some period in the future a drug called _tempus_ is developed which enables people to travel backward in time, literally or perhaps in mind alone. Young people are required to take _tempus_ journeys as part of the educational process. Story takes place in contemporary United States, c. 1970, and analyzes current problems by confronting the protagonist with a _tempus_-using visitor from the future.
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Author: Sheckley, Robert
Title: Down the digestive tract
In: _Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?_ (By Robert Silverberg)
Publisher: Doubleday and Co., New York
Pages: 145–147
Date: 1971
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as reality-testers
Annotation: An underground chemist gives a friend a mixture of hallucinogenic drugs guaranteed to send him into a true trip. Friend waits impatiently for the hallucinations to hit. Chemist and friend are actually not human but alien insecto-reptilian creatures, and it turns out that the hallucination the friend has is that of being a human being in our contemporary world.
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Author: Silverberg, Robert
Title: _Downward to the Earth_
Publisher: New American Library, New York
Pages: 176 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: The venom of a serpent found on an alien planet that has been colonized by Earthmen proves to have medicinal value, serving as a catalyst in limb-regeneration work; but when used in a different dosage it has psychological effects, evoking in Earthmen the illusion that they have been transformed into the elephant-like intelligent species that is the dominant native life-form of the planet. Illicit use of the drug for this purpose is common among the Earthmen stationed there. Protagonist, expiating old guilts, goes among the elephant-beings and eventually is admitted into ecstatic communion with them through use of the drug.
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Author: Silverberg, Robert
Title: _A Time of Changes_
Publisher: New American Library, New York
Pages: 220 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptors: Drugs as mind-expanders, drugs as a means of communication
Annotation: Scene is a planet of the future dominated by stern culture that makes a fetish of privacy and personal reticence. Narrator obtains from a “primitive” culture on another continent a drug which attacks the basics of his native culture by making possible direct telepathic contact between minds. He attempts to found a subculture of love and openness based on use of the drug, but, although he is a prince of the realm, he is proscribed and hunted down.
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Author: Silverberg, Robert
Title: _The World Inside_
Publisher: Doubleday and Co., New York
Pages: 201 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptors: Drugs as mind-expanders, drugs as a means of communication
Annotation: In world of 24th century, most of mankind lives in thousand-story apartment buildings each of which has a population of more than 800,000. Chapter three of the novel follows the adventures of a musician who, after performing at a concert, drugs himself with a _multiplexer_, a mind-expanding drug that temporarily induces a telepathic contact simultaneously with all 800,000 residents of his building, so that he perceives their lives and thoughts in one vast intricate construct.
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Author: Davis, Grania
Title: My head’s in a different place now
In: _Universe Two_, (Edited by Terry Carr)
Publisher: Ace Books, New York
Pages: 151–172
Date: 1972
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: Young American married couple, weary of life on welfare in a large city, travel into Central American jungle in search of a drug-using primitive tribe of which they have heard. Eventually they find an Eden-like place where the natives, though dominated by fears of supernatural beings, seem whole and happy. The Americans discover hallucinogenic mushrooms near the village, begin using them, and settle into an amiable life of tripping and telepathic contact with animals, insects, and plants. As story ends they are planning to turn on the unsuspecting villagers.
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Author: Hollis, H. H.
Title: Stoned counsel
In: _Again, Dangerous Visions_, (Edited by Harlan Ellison)
Publisher: Doubleday and Co., New York
Pages: 270–281
Date: 1972
Format: Short story
Descriptor: Drugs as mind-expanders
Annotation: In world of near future hallucinogenic drugs have become a routine part of the legal process. Lawyers examine evidence that is fed to them in direct association with LSD and other drugs, and trials are conducted with prosecutors and defense attorneys both in a drug-enhanced mental state. Approach of the story is sympathetic and detached; drug-enhancement is depicted as a new phase, not necessarily negative in implication, in courtroom procedure.