Drug Themes in Science Fiction/Annotated Bibliography-Contemporary Period
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
(1965–Present)
Works (not listed in original)
- Beyond bedlam
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow
- We can remember it for you wholesale
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
- Now Wait for Last Year
- Make Room! Make Room!
- The night that all time broke loose
- The Butterfly Kid
- The Ganymede Takeover
- One Million Centuries
- Carcinoma angels
- The Mind Parasites
- Camp Concentration
- The Santaroga Barrier
- The Final Programme
- How it was when the past went away
- Bug Jack Barron
- Barefoot in the Head
- Sundance
- Welcome to the monkey house
- Pulse
- Sky
- How can we sink when we can fly?
- Down the digestive tract
- Downward to the Earth
- A Time of Changes
- The World Inside
- My head's in a different place now
- Stoned counsel
- The eye of the lens
- Time travel for pedestrians
- The fourth profession
- Dying Inside
- No direction home
- Darkover Landfall
- The Stone That Never Came Down
- The R-Master
- The Soft Kill
- As dreams are made on
- Gods of Zar
- The weariest river
- The weed of time
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 of 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 |
| Descriptors: | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 cell. 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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." | |
| 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 psycho-therapist: 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Author: | Jones, Langdon |
| Title: | The eye of the lens |
| In: | The Eye of the Lens (By Langdon Jones) |
| Publisher: | Collier Books, New York |
| Pages: | 53-90 |
| Date: | 1972 |
| Format: | Short novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Avant-garde story without summarizable plot: it attempts to depict various cinematic and psychedelic modes of perception and includes (p. 84) an explicitly psychedelic scene within a British cathedral of the near future where hallucinatory religious rituals take place. | |
| Author: | Nelson, Ray |
| Title: | Time travel for pedestrians |
| In: | Again, Dangerous Visions, (Edited by Harlan Ellison) |
| Publisher: | Doubleday and Co., New York |
| Pages: | 140-159 |
| Date: | 1972 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Protagonist, using crushed "flower seeds" plus auto-hypnotic techniques, embarks on a trip in which his consciousness perceives past existences. He travels mentally to medieval northern Europe, to Egypt shortly after the time of Jesus, to medieval southern France, and other eras. | |
| Author: | Niven, Larry |
| Title: | The fourth profession |
| In: | Best Science Fiction of the Year, Vol. I, (Edited by Terry Carr) |
| Publisher: | Ballantine Books, New York |
| Pages: | 293-340 |
| Date: | 1972 |
| Format: | Short novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Alien beings known as Monks come to Earth and, to serve purposes of their own, distribute a variety of strange pills. One of these drugs is an intelligence-enhancer, another is a memory-destroyer, another induces instantaneous transport from one place to another. Story explores the effects of these and other alien-given drugs and the motivations of the aliens who distribute them. | |
| Author: | Silverberg, Robert |
| Title: | Dying Inside |
| Publisher: | Charles Scribner's and Sons, New York |
| Pages: | 245 pp. |
| Date: | 1972 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as means of communication |
| Annotation:Story takes place in 1976. Narrator is middle-aged New York intellectual who has had the power of telepathy since childhood and now is losing it. The power has embittered him by rendering him a freak, and he has taken pains to conceal knowledge of it from others. He tells how, in 1968, a close love relationship of his was terminated when he and his woman friend took LSD together; the trip had the unexpected effect of opening a two-way telepathic channel between them, so that not only could he read her mind as usual but she briefly had access to his, giving her a bad trip and causing her to recoil from him. | |
| Author: | Spinrad, Norman |
| Title: | No direction home |
| In: | Best Science Fiction of the Year, Vol. I, (Edited by Terry Carr) |
| Publisher: | Ballantine Books, New York |
| Pages: | 227-244 |
| Date: | 1972 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Scene is United States of the near future in which psychedelic drugs of all kinds, including many not yet known, are legal and widely used on all levels of society. Story speculates in detail on the nature of a commercialized legal psychedelics industry and on the forms future drugs may take. | |
| Author: | Bradley, Marion Zimmer |
| Title: | Darkover Landfall |
| Publisher: | Daw Books, New York |
| Pages: | 160 pp. |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Story describes the arrival on the extrasolar planet of Darkover of a shipload of colonists from Earth, and explores the impact on the Earthmen of the Ghost Wind, a native meteorological phenomenon that has psychedelic effects, caused by pollen, dust, or virus, which liberate ESP powers in their minds. The settlers, bombarded by hitherto unfamiliar sensory data, are plunged into conflict that transforms the group. | |
| Author: | Brunner, John |
| Title: | The Stone That Never Came Down |
| Publisher: | Doubleday and Co., New York |
| Pages: | 206 pp. |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Scene is London, 1980's: a time of chaos with World War III imminent. Chemists discover drug called VC—viral coefficient—which has the property of greatly intensifying sensory perception and amplifying intelligence and memory. Drug has ability to multiply in proper environment like living organism. When an unemployed teacher who has had an experimental dose of VC donates blood to central bloodbank, he unwittingly spreads VC widely to the world at large, causing an epidemic of sanity in which world leaders, now greatly more intelligent, take steps to abolish warfare and establish an ideally rational society. | |
| Author: | Dickson, Gordon R. |
| Title: | The R-Master |
| Publisher: | Lippincott, Philadelphia |
| Pages: | 216 pp. |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:In the middle of the 21st century an intelligence-enhancing drug called Reninase-47 has come into wide use. Though normally it simply stimulates the thought process, R-47 occasionally does massive damage to the mind, and in a few cases creates a super-genius, an R-master. Protagonist's brother takes R-47 and suffers brain damage. In order to help him, protagonist also takes the drug and unexpectedly emerges from treatment as an R-master, a member of an extraordinary elite group, and from another R-master he learns of the need for a vast reorganization of governmental policies. He becomes a revolutionary leader and works toward a transformation of society. | |
| Author: | Free, Colin |
| Title: | The Soft Kill |
| Publisher: | Berkley Books, New York |
| Pages: | 159 pp. |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-controllers |
| Annotation:Protagonist is a scientist stationed aboard an orbiting research station of the far future. Needing a holiday, he is transferred to a place called HighTown—an overpopulated city where a totalitarian government maintains control by dosing the citizens with a variety of tranquilizing and euphoric drugs. Novel explores the effect of government-by-chemistry. | |
| Author: | Pumilia, Joseph F. |
| Title: | As dreams are made on |
| Journal: | Fantastic Science Fiction, Vol. 22, No. 3, 18-29 |
| Publisher: | Ultimate Publishing Co., New York |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:Teenage boy obtains a supply of metamorphium, a drug that induces fantasy-gratification dreams. Not only are his dreams richly satisfying, but he discovers that his girlfriend, whom he sees in the dreams, is aware of the visions as if the drug has induced some telepathic link between them. He has a vision of a time when everyone is linked through shared metamorphium dreams—"one big dream, one big mind asleep and dreaming all the time," even though individual dreamers will wake from the big dream. | |
| Author: | Rotsler, William |
| Title: | Gods of Zar |
| Journal: | Amazing Stories, Vol. 47, No. 3, 20-40 |
| Publisher: | Ultimate Publishing Co., New York |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as euphorics |
| Annotation:An Earthman stranded on an alien planet becomes god of the local native race. When his people are attacked by a hostile tribe he defeats the enemy soldiers by dosing them with tazeel, a euphoric drug of the planet that destroys their discipline and converts them instantly from Spartan ferocity to self-indulgence. | |
| Author: | Scortia, Thomas N. |
| Title: | The weariest river |
| In: | Future City, (Edited by Roger Elwood) |
| Publisher: | Trident Press, New York |
| Pages: | 108-148 |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as euphorics |
| Annotation:The scene is about 350 years from now. An immortality treatment has been perfected and the world has become a savagely overcrowded, polluted urban sprawl in which people live forever. Drugs are the main refuge from boredom among the immortals. The protagonist is the inventor of the immortality serum, whose life is spent in an endless search for illegal drugs to palliate his guilt and spiritual malaise. | |
| Author: | Spinrad, Norman |
| Title: | The weed of time |
| Journal: | Vertex, Vol. 1, No. 3 |
| Publisher: | Mankind Publishing Co., Los Angeles |
| Pages: | 58, 92-93 |
| Date: | 1973 |
| Format: | Short story |
| Descriptor: | Drugs as mind-expanders |
| Annotation:An exploratory mission to the fifth planet of the star Tau Ceti in 2048 discovers a plant that is given the name of Tempis ceti, seeds and leaves of which have a psychedelic property: they destroy the linear perception of time and enable the subject to view all moments along his lifespan simultaneously. Seeds of the plant prove to be fertile on Earth and the drug comes into common use. Protagonist is a time-drug user whose simultaneous perception of his 110-year life-span sends him to a mental hospital. | |