Cool article in The Guardian about fictional drugs and their effects:
The most famous invented drug is probably soma in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It was an integral part of the story because it was an integral part of the authorities’ control mechanism – they were literally keeping the people doped up and happy. Sounds alright to me: a permanent state of blissed-out semi-catatonia. In fact, given my choice of fictional narcotics, soma would probably be first.
Nor would I mind sampling some melange/spice from Frank Herbert’s Dune (long life, heightened awareness and possible extrasensory properties, cool blue eyeballs); septus from Iain Banks’s Transition (the ability to flit between parallel worlds and inhabit others’ bodies); Dylar from Don DeLillo’s White Noise (no more fear of death); the various hallucinogens drunk with the old moloko in A Clockwork Orange (a nice quiet horrorshow starring Bog and all his angels); Can-D in Philip K Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (allows you to participate in a group hallucination). I also quite like the sound of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, described as “like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”. Well, it beats aspirin and sniffing exhaust pipes.
But as in life, so in literature, and not all fictional drugs are this appetising. Pretty much anything in William Gibson’s work, for instance, gives me the heebie-jeebies (betaphenethylamine from Neuromancer, Dancer in Virtual Light, whiz in Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Fear in Red Star, Winter Orbit). Substance D in Dick’s A Scanner Darkly is an unholy combination of LSD and crack cocaine: super-addictive, immediate, neurologically corrosive, brutal, deadly. Mimezine in Bruce Wagner’s brilliant graphic novel Wild Palms is the designer drug from hell. Serum 111 in A Clockwork Orange rewired Alex’s brain, destroyed his free will and damned him to an eternal purgatory of existential and biological nausea …
No comments:
Post a Comment