Transcriber’s Note
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ in this transcription.
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See the end of this document for details of corrections and other
changes.
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Research Issues 9
DRUG THEMES IN SCIENCE FICTION
[Illustration]
NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
RESEARCH ISSUES SERIES
1. Drugs and Employment
2. Drugs and Sex
3. Drugs and Attitude Change
4. Drugs and Family/Peer Influence
5. Drugs and Pregnancy
6. Drugs and Death
7. Drugs and Addict Lifestyles
8. A Cocaine Bibliography—Nonannotated
9. Drug Themes in Science Fiction
10. Drug Themes in Fiction
——————————————————————————————
Cover Illustration
William Blake. The figure of Urizen or the Ancient of Days.
Frontispiece from _Europe_. Illuminated printing.
DRUG THEMES IN SCIENCE FICTION
by
Robert Silverberg
November 1974
National Institute on Drug Abuse
11400 Rockville Pike
Rockville, Maryland 20852
This volume, part of a Research Issues Series, was prepared for the
National Institute on Drug Abuse by Documentation Associates,
Box 25892, Los Angeles, California,
under Contract Number HSM-42-73-222.
DHEW Publication No. (ADM) 75-190
Printed 1975
FOREWORD
The issues of drug use and abuse have generated many volumes of
words, all written in an attempt to explain the “problem” and suggest
the “solution.” Data have been generated by researchers from many
disciplines, each looking at a particular aspect of an issue. The
present booklet is one of a new series intended to aid researchers who
find it difficult to find the time to scan, let alone read all the
information which exists and which continues to be published daily in
their area of interest. An attempt has been made to focus predominantly
on empirical research findings and major theoretical approaches.
Included in volumes 1 through 7 of the series are summaries of the
major research findings of the last 15 years, formulated and detailed
to provide the reader with the purpose, methodology, findings and
conclusions of previous studies done in the topic area. Each topic was
chosen because it represented a challenging issue of current interest
to the research community. As additional issues are identified, the
relevant research will be published as part of this series.
Several of the volumes in the series represent a departure from
the above description. These also represent challenging issues, and
issues of current interest; they are, however, virtually unexplored
areas which have received little attention from the research world. For
example, the subjects of drugs and the visual arts, science fiction,
and fiction—aspects of contemporary life which impact on all of us—are
explored here by writers who have been deeply involved in those fields.
Their content is perhaps provocative, and certainly stimulating.
The Research Issues series is a group project of staff members
of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Division of Research,
Behavioral and Social Sciences Branch. Special thanks are due to the
continued guidance and support of Dr. Louise Richards and Dr. Norman
Krasnegor. Selection of articles for inclusion was greatly aided by
the suggestions of a peer review group, researchers themselves, each
of whom reviewed a topic of particular interest. It is my pleasure to
acknowledge their contribution to the project here.
Dan J. Lettieri, Ph. D.
Project Officer
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Robert Silverberg is the author of many science-fiction
novels, including _The Masks of Time_, _Son of Man_, _A Time
of Changes_, _Dying Inside_, and others, as well as numerous
short stories. He has won two Hugo Awards and three Nebulas
for novel and short story. He is a past president of the
Science Fiction Writers of America.
Mr. Silverberg has also written several non-fiction books
on historical and archaeological subjects, including _The
Pueblo Revolt_, _Mound Builders of Ancient America_, _The
Challenge of Climate_, and _The Realm of Prester John_. Born
and educated in New York City, Mr. Silverberg now lives in
Oakland, California.
PREFACE
The explosive upsurge in the use of mind-altering drugs by
middle-class Americans in the past decade has been a conspicuous and
much-discussed phenomenon of our times. Beginning in the mid-1960’s
and peaking, perhaps, about 1970, the use of marijuana, LSD, and even
heroin has taken on the character of an epidemic, not only among the
young but among many citizens of mature years. Though at present the
spread of heroin addiction appears to be once more confining itself
to low-income groups and LSD has become less fashionable among the
experimental-minded, certainly marijuana has established itself as an
almost universal drug used regularly by millions of Americans, and
use of more potent mind-alterers remains heavy if no longer greatly
accelerating.
During the period of social dislocation—marked by radical changes
in styles of clothing and dress, assassinations of political leaders,
disruption of the governmental processes as a response to a war
commonly seen as immoral, rampant inflation, and other traumas and
upheavals—that corresponds to the spread of drug use in the United
States, science fiction has become one of the most popular specialized
subgenres of literature. Once the obscure amusement of a few thousand
cultists, science fiction is now read by millions; such novelists as
Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Crichton, and others have
reached the best-seller lists with works of science fiction; motion
pictures such as _2001_ have won wide audiences and science fiction has
been conspicuous in the theater and in the themes of popular music.
While this increase in the popularity of science fiction is in part
a response to the wide publicity accorded the space explorations of
the United States and the Soviet Union, I think it is much more to
be ascribed to some of the same forces that have stimulated so much
interest in drug-taking. That is, in a period of social upheaval
such as we have experienced since the death of John F. Kennedy and
the escalation of the Vietnamese war, conventional modes of behavior
lose their appeal, and fascination with the bizarre, the alien, the
unfamiliar, the strange, with all sorts of stimulation that provide
escape from the realities of the moment, increases at a great rate.
Science fiction not only offers those values in abundance but also, in
its facet as satirical commentary on the here-and-now world, provides
a perspective on our rapid social changes that has great appeal to
readers, especially the young.
Surveys have shown that the audience for science fiction is
primarily adolescent and above-average in intelligence; most of the
readers are between 15 and 25 years of age (though of course some
remain addicts of the genre throughout their lives). Therefore,
there is great correspondence between the main drug-using and
science-fiction-reading segments of the population, and it is
worthwhile to examine science fiction for insights into the use of
mind-altering drugs and for views of what drug use may lie in the
future.
For the present research project I have compiled a group of
English-language short stories and novels which deal with the use
of mind-altering drugs, all written since 1900 and falling within
the literary category of science fiction. I have avoided inclusion
of that large body of stories dealing with drugs whose effects are
primarily on the body rather than the mind: immortality serums,
for example. Some of these stories date from the earliest years of
the science-fiction genre, notably from the 1920’s and 1930’s when
mass-market science-fiction magazines first began publication. Not
surprisingly, however, the majority of the stories within the study
date from the post-1965 period, when the use of drugs first pervaded
the national life to its present extent. For reasons explained in
the accompanying introductory essay, science fiction is more often a
reflection of existing societal trends than a prediction of trends to
come. The upsurge in drug use is precisely mirrored by the upsurge in
the use of such themes in science fiction.
Science fiction is as much a guide to where we are as it is a
vision of where we are going. A literature so popular with the young,
commanding so intense and devoted a following, can be of significant
value in revealing the patterns contemporary society is taking and will
take in the years just ahead.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
_Page_
PREFACE v
OVERVIEW OF DRUG THEMES IN
SCIENCE FICTION 1
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 9
Primitive Period, c. 1900–1935 11
Predictive Period, c. 1935–1965 17
Contemporary Period, c. 1965–1973 31
AUTHOR/TITLE INDEX 53
OVERVIEW OF DRUG THEMES IN SCIENCE FICTION
Defining science fiction is no easy task. Some of the definitions
that have been proposed are so loose that they would qualify a book
like Sinclair Lewis’ _Arrowsmith_ as science fiction—it surely is
“fiction about science”—and others are drawn so narrowly that they
would exclude much of what is published today in science-fiction
magazines and books. With that caveat in mind, therefore, I offer one
of the more flexible definitions, one which I think does cover the
greater part of what I understand to be science fiction:
Science fiction is that branch of fantasy which engages in
imaginative speculation about the impact of technology on
human society.
By classing science fiction as a branch of fantasy, I make it
a subdivision of that vast literary genre that includes Homer’s
_Odyssey_, Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, the Norse sagas, _Alice in
Wonderland_, much of Poe, and so forth. Placing the emphasis on
technology, however, requires science fiction to have a certain
systematic content, an underlying rationale of theme. A story about
a vampire is pure fantasy; a story that rationalizes vampirism in
terms of metabolic phenomena is science fiction. It is the attempt at
inducing a willing suspension of disbelief by supplying a plausible
scaffolding for the implausible that gives science fiction its identity
within the greater realm of fantasy.
But because science fiction _is_ a form of fantasy, it is ideally
suited for the exploration of drug-related phenomena. A drug is a kind
of magic wand; but it is a chemist’s magic wand, a laboratory product,
carrying with it the cachet of science. By offering his characters a
vial of green pills or a flask of mysterious blue fluid the author
is able to work wonders as easily as a sorcerer; and by rigorously
examining the _consequences_ of his act of magic, he performs the
exploration of speculative ideas which is the essence of science
fiction.
So in the nineteenth century Robert Louis Stevenson produced _Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley devised an elixir
of immortality in _The Mortal Immortal_, and H. G. Wells created a
whole shelf of drug-related stories, speeding up human motion in
“The New Accelerator,” turning beasts into men in _The Island of Dr.
Moreau_, depicting an unseeable phantom in _The Invisible Man_. And
in the present century the use of mind-altering or mind-controlling
drugs has become one of the prime vehicles for the speculations of
science-fictionists.
In preparing this study of drug themes in science fiction, I have
employed the following categorical designations:
_Drugs as Euphorics_: Drugs that give pleasure in simple
unstructured ways, through release from depression and tension,
much as alcohol does in our society (though alcohol is not strictly
speaking a euphoric, of course).
_Drugs as Mind Expanders_: Drugs that provide “psychedelic” visions
of other times or places or that offer a sensation of oneness with
the cosmos as a whole; analogous to LSD in our society.
_Drugs as Panaceas_: Drugs which, through tranquilizing or
neutralizing effects, calm the mind without necessarily inducing
euphoria.
_Drugs as Mind Controllers_: Drugs that enable one entity to limit
or direct the activities or desires of another; analogous to
brainwashing, and generally associated with totalitarian activities.
_Drugs as Intelligence-Enhancers_: Drugs which have the specific
property of extending or amplifying the rational processes of the
mind.
_Drugs as Sensation-Enhancers_: Drugs whose effects are achieved
through amplified or extended bodily sensation-response, perhaps
analogous to marijuana in our society.
_Drugs as Reality-Testers_: Drugs which permit the user to
penetrate the “real” realities beyond the surface manifestations of
daily life.
_Drugs as Mind-Injurers_: Drugs used as weapons in biochemical
warfare, aimed at the mind.
_Drugs as Means of Communication_: Drugs that have the specific
property of opening hitherto unknown channels of communication
between minds.
Two distinct attitudes toward the use of mind-related drugs have
manifested themselves in science fiction. One is cautionary: that
any extraordinary indulgence in extraordinary drugs is likely to rot
the moral fiber of the user, leading to lassitude and general decay
of the individual or of society, and ultimately, perhaps, aiding the
establishment of a totalitarian order. The other is visionary and
utopian: that through the employment of drugs mankind can attain
spiritual or psychological powers not ordinarily available, and by so
doing can enter into a new and higher phase of existence.
This latter attitude has become far more widespread since 1965,
when middle-class use of hallucinogenic and euphoric drugs in western
industrial civilization first began to take on the aspect of a major
cultural shift. The cultural assumptions of science fiction as a whole
can clearly be seen to follow, rather than to lead, public opinion:
most science fiction published in the twentieth century has been
mass-market commercial fiction which, however daring its departures
from everyday reality, has generally tended to adopt the conventional
moral dogmas of middle-class society, as does most commercial fiction.
Science fiction of the 1920’s and 1930’s reveals a remarkable degree
of racism no longer acceptable to general readers in what they read
(though they may cling to prejudices in daily life). Science fiction
of the 1940’s and 1950’s is marked by casual sexism likewise no longer
officially acceptable. And science fiction in general has shown a
strong, if implicit, bias in favor of capitalism, the work ethic,
Puritan sexual morality, and other pillars of western industrial
society. Drug-users in science-fiction stories until quite recently
were analogous to heavy users of alcohol in mainstream fiction: their
reliance on a consciousness-altering substance was seen as a sign
of weakness of character. In the past decade there has been a major
cultural shift in our society toward hedonistic behavior, at first
furtively, now openly; and this, after the customary lag, has been
translated into a shift in the direction of permissiveness in the
conventional moral attitudes expressed by popular entertainment. (The
private behavior of individuals is almost always far more scandalous
than the standards of behavior the public demands in entertainment or
from elected officials, but as taboos dissolve in private life they
weaken, to a lesser extent, in official public morality.)
Science-fiction writers tend to be no more radical as a group than
any other randomly selected cross-section of middle-class educated
contemporary citizenry, so far as my extensive personal acquaintance
with them has shown; however forward-looking their fictional visions
may be, they are, in the main, far from atypical in daily life style.
Not only do they conform to prevailing cultural beliefs more than
outsiders are likely to suspect, but, as is true of most who depend
for their livelihoods on mass-audience acceptance, they quite readily
espouse a surprising conservatism of philosophy in their work. In the
past, therefore, professional science-fictionists almost automatically
chose a cautionary position for stories embodying drug-related themes,
the drugs being symbolic of decay rather than growth, and it is only in
the last few years that some writers have felt free to depict the use
of certain mind drugs in a positive—even evangelical—light.
The extent of the shift may best be illustrated from the work of
a writer who, although he wrote science fiction, cannot be considered
a professional science-fictionist nor an advocate of conventional
morality, and whose career was conducted almost entirely outside the
taboo-ridden assumptions of mass-market publishing: Aldous Huxley.
Huxley’s _Brave New World_ (1932) is a bitter satiric novel that,
as its sardonic title indicates, depicts a utopian world of the
future in which children are born in bottles at a State Hatchery and
Conditioning Center, designed by the benevolent world state to fit a
particular economic niche, and, as adults, kept in line by a generous
bread-and-circuses policy. Restlessness is cured by a wondrous drug
called _soma_: “... if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of
time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions,” Huxley
tells us, “there is always _soma_, delicious _soma_, half a gramme for
a half-holiday, a gramme for a weekend, two grammes for a trip to the
gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence
they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the
solid ground of daily labor and distraction....”[1] Those malcontents
and nonconformists who cannot accept the soft mechanical pleasures of
Huxley’s brave new world are exiled to remote islands.
—————————
[1] Huxley, Aldous. _Brave New World._ New York: Harper and Brothers
Publishers, 1946. p. 67.
_Soma_, in _Brave New World_, is implicitly condemned as an
opiate, a mind-luller, an instrument of repression. Huxley’s negative
outlook toward the drug is not, though, an expression of work-oriented
Puritan morality so much as a classic liberal-humanitarian distrust of
technology: the Huxley of 1932 plainly believed that mankind coddled by
drugs was something less than what mankind could be. The young Huxley
felt contempt for those who needed mechanical aids or who depended
on anything other than the force of their own intellects. Many years
later, however, a very different Huxley experienced the psychedelic
marvels of mescaline and LSD, which kindled in him strong esthetic
delight and something akin to spiritual ecstasy. When he next attempted
the fictional construction of a utopian commonwealth, in _Island_
(1962), his outlook on mind-altering drugs was far more sympathetic.
In this ideal state of the future one uses not the soporific _soma_
but the ecstasy-invoking _moksha_, a mind-expanding hallucinogen.
Concerning _moksha_ one character says, “Having had the misfortune to
be brought up in Europe, Murugan calls it dope and feels about it all
the disapproval that, by conditioned reflex, the dirty word evokes. We,
on the contrary, give the stuff good names—the _moksha_-medicine, the
reality-revealer, the truth-and-beauty pill. And we know, by direct
experience, that the good names are deserved.”[2] Huxley is really
talking about LSD, and his tone is that of the acid-evangelist.
—————————
[2] Huxley, Aldous. _Island._ New York: Harper and Row, Publishers,
1962. p. 157.
Drug as contemptible anodyne, drug as gateway to higher
reality—those are the poles bounding the handling of drugs in science
fiction. The older science fiction was preponderantly negative,
as, for example, James Gunn’s _The Joy Makers_, published in 1961
but written half a decade earlier, in which a repressive government
sustains itself through mandatory use of euphorics. The same theme can
be found in Hartley’s _Facial Justice_ (1960), and in other works. Even
when not used as an instrument of totalitarianism, drugs are often seen
as dangerous self-indulgence, as in Wellman’s _Dream-Dust from Mars_
(1938), Smith’s _Hellflower_ (1953), or Pohl’s _What to Do Until the
Analyst Comes_ (1956). The prototypes for the imaginary drugs described
in these stories are alcohol and heroin—drugs which blur the mind and
lower the consciousness.
Much recent science fiction, however, taking cognizance of such
newly popular drugs as LSD, marijuana, and mescaline, show society
transformed, enhanced, and raised up by drug use. Silverberg’s _A Time
of Changes_ (1971) portrays a dour, self-hating culture into which
comes a drug that stimulates direct telepathic contact between human
minds and brings into being a subculture of love and openness. This
creates a great convulsion in the society, but the implication is that
the change the drug brings is beneficial. Similarly, in Panshin’s
_How Can We Sink When We Can Fly?_ (1971), a drug called _tempus_
that induces travel in time is part of the educational process of a
future society. In _The Peacock King_ by McCombs and White (1965) LSD
is used as a training device to prepare astronauts for the rigors of
interstellar travel, and in H. H. Hollis’ _Stoned Counsel_ (1972)
hallucinogenic drugs have become routine aspects of courtroom work.
Another view of a society transformed but not necessarily injured by
mass drug use is Wyman Guin’s _Beyond Bedlam_, dating from 1951, in
which schizophrenia is desired and encouraged and is induced by drugs.
In Silverberg’s _Downward to the Earth_ (1971) hallucinogens play a
part in ecstatic religion on another world.
A variant of the mind-expanding drug is the intelligence-enhancing
drug, long a common theme in science fiction. Some recent exponents
of the theme are Brunner’s _The Stone That Never Came Down_ (1973),
Dickson’s _The R-Master_ (1973), and Disch’s _Camp Concentration_
(1968).
Not all depiction of drugs in recent science fiction is
sympathetic, of course. Aldiss’ _Barefoot in the Head_ (1970) shows
all of Europe thrown into confusion by the “acid-head war,” in which
an Arab power doses the whole continent with psychedelic weapons.
(Aldiss does indicate at least peripherally that the new tripped-out
culture emerging in war-wrecked Europe is not entirely inferior to
its predecessor.) Chester Anderson’s lighthearted _The Butterfly Kid_
(1967) depicts hallucinogenic drugs as weapons employed by aliens,
whether mind-expanding, mind-contracting, or mind-controlling. In the
horrendously overpopulated future of Harry Harrison’s _Make Room! Make
Room!_ (1966), LSD and marijuana are the best available escapes from
the daily nightmare that is life; in a similarly crowded world imagined
by Doris Pitkin Buck in _Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming_ (1964) the
drug of choice is nothing we have today, but rather one that gives
the user the vicarious experience of existence as a dinosaur! However
different the details, though, the stories say the same thing: that
fortitude is not enough, that chemical assistance will be needed.
The stories in the sample chosen for this project illustrate the
whole range of drug themes in science fiction, from the plausible to
the fantastic, from the horrifying to the ecstasy-inducing. In a world
where man and his technological marvels must coexist along an uneasy
interface, science fiction indicates some of the possible impact areas
in the decades and centuries ahead.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The science-fiction works selected for this bibliography are
arranged chronologically within the categories described below.
_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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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
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.
——————————————————————————————
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.
——————————————————————————————
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