Tevun-Krus #65 - AcidPunk

Psychedelics and Sci-Fi - An Article by @PhonerionBallznevsky

Drug use and science fiction—whether in the creation of, or in writing about—likely go hand in hand since the very beginning. That big celestial chariot God rides in on in the Old Testament, flying around with wheels within wheels and glowing fire. Come on. That's a classic piece of drugged-up imagery. When the hell was this scene originally written? Who cares, but a hell of a long time ago, and you know those dudes were tripping on something.

Published in 1865, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, while not science fiction, likely influenced boatloads of future science-fiction writers. And why wouldn't it? It's a classic tale of imagination, of altered reality, of things not being as they might at first seem. And that Caterpillar was definitely smoking reefer in his hookah...

Further down the line in 1932, we see Aldous Huxley incorporate the drug "soma" in his groundbreaking dystopian novel, Brave New World. Soma seems to be good for a lot of things, including making you horny as shit, happy as hell, and able to dance and fuck all night. Bernard, the lead, isn't really into soma, preferring instead to be himself, regardless of how he feels or how he fits in. Given how integral the drug is to the world of Brave New World, one might consider this the first—or at least an early—AcidPunk work. (Bonus points for including the mescaline-containing peyote cactus near the end.) Interestingly, Huxley would later write about his own experiences taking mescaline, a naturally occurring psychedelic drug, in 1954's The Doors of Perception, a work of nonfiction.

Then we've got A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, from 1962. While some claim this is a scary book, like all good dystopian novels it's a mixture of social satire and taking present-day fears to their furthest ends. A Clockwork Orange is about youth criminality and brainwashing, fueled by drug-laden milk cocktails, which minors are free to indulge in. This "milk-plus," as it's called, starts the nightmare that leads to Alex eventually being convicted of murder and sentenced to brainwashing.

From here we can go towards Frank Herbert's Dune and the collection of books by acclaimed sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick.

1965's Dune features "spice," one of the most iconic sci-fi drugs. Spice extends life, makes you stronger and healthier, increases and alters your perception, lets you see the future, and can even facilitate interstellar travel. Not bad for a desert organism. It's believed Herbert modeled spice after his experiences with psilocybin-containing mushrooms (better known as magic mushrooms or 'shrooms).

Philip K. Dick's body of work is huge. From early books about presidential space lotteries and post-apocalyptic hedonism, Dick eventually became known as the sci-fi writer who wrote about drugs in practically all his books. Fictitious drugs. Drugs that would make you think you were a main character in a simulation, living a perfect life. Drugs that would literally send you to a parallel universe where you didn't exist. His books bent the mind in beautiful ways. Interestingly enough, he only briefly experimented with psychedelic drugs, instead preferring to take speed (which he was later told didn't even affect him—how does that work...?).

Though he didn't write sci-fi, Hunter S. Thompson deserves a mention for 1971's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is the drug book people tend to think of. His writing style and themes became so iconic I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a sci-fi writer writing about drugs these days who doesn't cite HST as an influence of some kind. His gonzo journalism—of being part of the story—is so commonplace today's journalists likely aren't aware they're pinching style from Thompson.

Welcome to the '80s. New drugs popped up. Designer drugs were becoming commonplace. Who'd want to take LSD when it lasted twelve hours and nobody had any acid anymore anyway. The '80s were fast, swinging, everybody had to move. Somewhere to be, and they should've been there yesterday. Cocaine and ecstasy, crack and meth. But the '80s also saw computer technology developing at a mile a minute.

Enter William Gibson, who was writing a science-fiction novel called Neuromancer, considered groundbreaking CyberPunk and an influence on everything since (including The Matrix). He went to the movies and saw the adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, better known as Blade Runner. He thought his book was dead in the water. Little did he know it was anything but. While not a drug book in the traditional sense, Gibson's writing is fast, stylish and dreamlike. Plugging in and entering cyberspace is basically turning on and dropping out with psychedelics.

In essence it's a metaphor for altered consciousness. Technology changes how we think, but so do drugs and religion and politics and everything else. The seeds of AcidPunk have been planted here and there in our culture's collective body of work, but it's still young. It doesn't need to just be about drugs. As writers we will build the road connecting this sub-genre to everything else.