Does science fiction from the last fifteen years reflect this proliferation of addictive tendencies?
The answer, as far as television shows is concerned, is a resounding yes. Drugs are now firmly embedded in science fiction shows, and their story arcs wouldn’t be possible without them. A few examples: “promicin” in The 4400 (2004-2007) is a fictional neurotransmitter that has a 50% probability of killing its user and a 50% probability of endowing them with an “ability”; the addictive “Wraith enzyme” in Stargate: Atlantis (2004-2008) confers humans with increased strength and speed; and “cortexiphan” in Fringe (2008-2013) is a nootropic, or “smart drug,” that results in abilities like telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and astral projection.
Many recent films also rely heavily on drug tropes. Equilibrium’s (2002) “prozium” suppresses emotions, an idea that goes at least as far back as Arthur K. Barnes’ short story “Emotion Solution” (1936). The first three entries in the popular X-Men film series (2000, 2003, 2006) deal with a mutant-inhibiting drug known simply as “the cure.”
The world-wide virus unleashed in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) is caused by the drugs “ALZ-112” and “ALZ-113.” Dredd’s (2012) “Slo-Mo,” which stretches subjective time, harkens back to the similar “tempus fugit” in Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1951). And nootropics make additional appearances in the form of “NZT-48” in Neil Burger’s Limitless (2011) and as “CPH4” in Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014).
Regarding written science fiction, I mentioned its marked fragmentation in the 90s: if anything, this has accelerated in the years since. There are now more fantastical camps or sub-genres than ever before. As might be expected, some of these deal with drugs and addiction, while others don’t.
Steampunk stories, for instance, often feature historically-appropriate drugs: in Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker (2009), “lemon sap” is a highly addictive “yellowish, gritty, paste-like substance” distilled from a toxic mist that eventually renders its users zombie-like, while in Tarnished (2012), the first volume of Karina Cooper’s St. Croix Chronicles, the heroine is addicted to opium and laudanum.
China Miéville’s work, often associated with the New Weird, uses drugs to great effect. Perdido Street Station (2000), for instance, features a caterpillar that feeds on the drug “dreamshit,” while Embassytown (2011) features addiction to a new kind of speech.
It’s tempting to reassess vampire fiction, with its renewed popularity, under the lens of addiction; vampires, after all, live in a shadow world and feel an insatiable need for their next “fix” of blood. But vampire narratives tend to focus more on gender and sexual politics22. (There are, of course, exceptions: a notable one may be Abel Ferrara’s film The Addiction [1995]).
Zombies, on the other hand, operate at sub-human levels, endlessly repeating a brain-damaged cycle of consumption, behavior that can better be seen as a stand-in for addiction23.
Urban fantasy has also picked up on addiction as a theme. Jaye Wells’ Prospero’s War series, for instance, is founded on the notion that magic is addictive, and the author has commented that every character in the series “is affected by addiction. It’s not that different from real life.”24
Meanwhile, other specialized story forms, such as hard SF, military SF or Weird West, don’t seem particularly preoccupied with the subject.
Perhaps it is science fiction writers not associated with particular subgenres who are most consistently continuing to ring interesting variations on the drug/addiction theme. In fact, we may be seeing a small renaissance of such work.
Nancy Kress’ Yesterday’s Kin (2014), though not about drugs per se, neatly literalizes the notion of drugs as changing one’s personality by inventing the drug “sugarcane,” which actually changes who one is, in the words of one of its users, into “the person he was supposed to be”—though, as it happens, that person is the never the same twice.
Maxwell Chambers, the protagonist of Henry Escaya’s The Making of Miasma (2014), begins as an addict to “Cerulean,” a drug that stimulates pattern recognition in the brain, and, through a government drug trial, is exposed to the far more dangerous and life-altering “Dobrom,” triggering a massive epidemic. Daryl Gregory’s Afterparty (2014), set in a post-smart drug revolution future, perhaps features the ultimate fictional drug: the “Numinous” provides access to divinity, or God, for each user, thereby rendering all other drugs unnecessary.
As long as science fiction continues to be concerned with questions of identity, perception, epistemology, pleasure, freedom and existentialism, it seems likely that drugs and addiction will continue to be integral parts of its narrative kit.
The genre’s history shows that these are among the most versatile storytelling tools available, and can be used to zoom in or enhance any conceivable idea in all manner of recreated pasts, alternate presents, and extrapolated futures. I think it’s safe to say that drugs in science fiction are here to stay.
Footnotes:
1 The novel also features the addictive mental enhancer “sapho juice.”
2 Much of Philip K. Dick’s work makes use of drugs, and he wrote at length on the subject (see, for example, his essay “Drugs, Hallucinations and the Quest for Reality” [1964]). Perhaps one of the most memorable fictional psychoactive drugs in his body of work is the powerful “Substance D” in A Scanner Darkly (1977), the book from which the title of this article is taken.
3 I invite the curious reader to seek out Robert Silverberg’s Drug Themes in Science Fiction (1974), a critical bibliography of science fiction drug stories from 1929-1973.
4 “Soma,” for example, is an instrument of distraction and repression in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).
5 2014 National Drug Control Strategy - 2014 Data Supplement, Table 2, page 24. Drug usage statistics expressed as a percentage of the population in this article are from this source, unless otherwise noted. All drug usage and addiction references throughout this article refer to the United States.
6 See Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance by Erich Goode & Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1994), Chapter 12, “The American Drug Panic of the 1980s.”
7 For a thorough and engrossing discussion, I recommend Andrew M. Butler’s book-length study Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s (2012), from which this term is quoted.
8 See prev.
9 It’s possible, too, that with the discovery of endorphins in 1975, and various other studies regarding neurotransmitters bearing fruit, for many the notion of transcendent experience may have started to decouple from hallucinogens. Chemistry, rather than spirituality, became associated with these “trips,” surely removing some of the appeal.
10 Consider Quaaludes, for example. Quaaludes (the brand name of methaqualone, first prescribed in the 1960s as a non-addictive sleeping aid) surged in popularity, particularly among teens, in the 1970s. But government initiatives had severely reduced their consumption by 1984: see page 47, “Methaqualone (1982)”, of http://www.justice.gov/dea/about/history/1980-1985.pdf.
11 This last figure is based on respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll. See Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance by Erich Goode & Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1994), Chapter 12, “The American Drug Panic of the 1980s.”
12 Figures on maximum cocaine use vary with sources. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration used throughout, cocaine consumption reached an apex of 3%—5.7 million Americans—by 1985. A PBS website, on the other hand, places the maximum in 1982, and says there were 10.4 million users.
13 See Mississippi Review, 47/8 (1988), p. 51.
14 For an insightful discussion of Shepard’s retrospective The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008) that comments on these stories, see Paul Kincaid’s SF Site review at https://www.sfsite.com/08b/ls278.htm.
15 An annotated discussion may be found in “Chapter 10: The 1990s” of Roger Luckhurst’s Science Fiction (2005).
16 Heroin usage went from 1.6% to 1.8% during th
is period, and resulted in more heroin-related overdoses than ever before. For a recent write-up, see http://time.com/4505/heroin-gains-popularity-as-cheap-doses-flood-the-u-s/.
17 See http://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2014/04/in-nationwide-survey-more-students-use-marijuana-fewer-use-other-drugs.
18 In 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a report titled “Addressing Prescription Drug Abuse in the United States” that contains alarming statistics, such as the fact that “opioid-related overdose deaths now outnumber overdose deaths involving all illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine combined.” Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center have found that “nearly 70% of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half take two.”
19 More than two-thirds of U.S. adults are currently overweight or obese, and obesity rates have more than doubled in adults and children since the 1970’s (see http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/obesity-in-the-us/). A 2009 paper published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine found that “multiple but similar brain circuits are disrupted in obesity and drug addiction,” and advised “that strategies aimed at improving dopamine function might be beneficial in the treatment and prevention of obesity.” The American Foundation for Addiction Research has compiled a list of articles on “food addiction.” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Moss has gathered and documented a myriad ways in which the processed food industry continuously and scientifically re-engineers its product to create maximum cravings in its consumers as a means of increasing revenue in his book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (2013).
20 In 2000 the average American man watched four hours and eleven minutes of television per day, the American woman four hours and forty-six minutes; by 2009 these figures had climbed to four hours and fifty-four minutes and five hours and thirty-one minutes respectively (see the compilation of TV-related statistics “TV Basics” assembled by the Television Bureau of Advertising). A 2012 Nielsen report found that the average American over the age of two was watching more than thirty-four hours of live television a week, in addition to three to six hours of recorded programs. An article published by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Scientific American, “Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor” (February 2002), suggests a parallelism between the symptoms of drug dependency, such as withdrawal, and prolonged television consumption. According to a recent TiVo survey, the newer phenomenon of “binge watching” is increasing, too, and perceptions of it as a negative are declining among viewers. (Perhaps ironically, the most binge-watched show at the start of 2014 was Breaking Bad [2008-2013]).
21 According to 2013 data released by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, there has been a whopping 279% rise in the total number of cosmetic procedures performed in the US since 1997. During this timeframe surgical procedures (of which the five most common, in descending order, were liposuction, breast augmentation, blepharoplasty, abdominoplasty, and rhinoplasty) increased by 89%, while nonsurgical procedures increased by 521% (the five most common, in descending order, were botulinum toxin, hyaluronic acid, hair removal, microdermabrasion, and photorejuvenation). Repeat cosmetic surgery patients are also becoming more common; business from repeat patients increased by 13% from 2009 to 2010, by 8% from 2010 to 2011, by 7% from 2011 to 2012, and again by 4% from 2012 to 2013 (see individual yearly reports at http://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/plastic-surgery-statistics.html).
22 See Jennifer Fountain’s “The Vampire in Modern American Media: 1975 - 2000.”
23 Zombies have often been discussed in terms of other forces, like consumerism. See, for example, Stephen Harper’s “Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.”
24 http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/guest-post-special-needs-in-strange-worlds-jaye-wells-on-addiction-in-fantasy/
About the Author
Alvaro is the co-author, with Robert Silverberg, of When the Blue Shift Comes, which received a starred review from Library Journal. Alvaro’s short fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Analog, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, Apex and other venues, and Alvaro was nominated for the 2013 Rhysling Award. Alvaro’s reviews, critical essays and interviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, SF Signal, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Foundation, and other markets. Alvaro currently edits the blog for Locus.
Anywhere with Pillars:
A Conversation with Jo Walton
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Jo Walton has published ten novels, three poetry collections and an essay collection, with another two novels due out in 2015. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award in 2004 for Tooth and Claw, and the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2012 for Among Others. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are much better. She writes science fiction and fantasy, reads a lot, talks about books, and eats great food. She plans to live to be ninety-nine and write a book every year.
I first learned of Jo Walton’s work when I heard about Tooth and Claw. Dragons by way of Anthony Trollope? I was hooked. After that I regularly sought out her fiction, and Jo’s fiery Tor.com posts quickly became an addiction. It was therefore a real treat, though a bit unnerving, to moderate her on a panel about the Retro Hugos at the most recent Worldcon. I shouldn’t have worried. The panel went well—all I had to do was get out of the way of Jo and the other participants. In fact, it went well enough for Jo to take time out of her busy schedule a few months later to answer some questions for me . . .
I love your character names. What’s your process for coming up with them, and how early or late does it happen in your overall creative process?
Many of my characters arrive with names. Others don’t. Early in the process of a project I’ll make an alphabetized list of culture-appropriate names, and grab one when I need it. Often I’ll know already where in the alphabet I want the name to come, and sometimes the kind of sounds I want, because I’ll have an idea of the character’s personality. If I don’t, if it’s a case of somebody coming through the door with a gun and I snatch a name at random, they’ll get a lot of their personality from being called Wendy, with its wide open beginning and snapped shut end, and its roots in J.M. Barrie.
The question of how somebody whose parents named them after the motherly little girl who did want to grow up got to the point of picking up that gun and be coming through the door with it will be part of the character’s history. This will (naturally) be completely invisible to the reader in most cases, but it’s very useful to me when it comes to how a character will talk and behave.
Names always come very early in the process. If I have to change a character name it’s a huge painful thing, and it changes the character. I think about names a lot. Names are charged and powerful and pull in different directions. They have historical and mythological resonance, they have sound resonance, and they have class resonance—whether the reader recognizes that or not. They also have dates, when you’re working in this world. Someone named Ashley is a certain age and class, for instance. In a different world, then the reader won’t already know what a name denotes, but it will still have that kind of context, and I’ll be thinking about that. You can use names to do worldbuilding and convey context—people from different societies will have different kinds of names.
After reading your posts for Tor.com, I’m curious if you maintain a reading log that tracks your reading activity, including the titles of the books you’ve read and when you’ve finished them (and how many times you’ve read them!).
No, I don’t. I read for pleasure, keeping databases would be boring. I do have a Goodreads account and I do update it sometimes. I certainly don’t track how many times I’ve read something, whatever for?
There’s a competitive element to the way some people talk about reading—x many books, x many times read—that is really strange to me. I’ve been accused of boast
ing about how fast I read when I mention it on Tor.com, so I’ve stopped talking about it. I really do read entirely for fun.
What are the two or three books you think you’ve re-read most often in your life? How many times roughly have you re-read them, and do you expect to continue returning to these titles with the same fervor in the future?
The problem is not that they lose their appeal, the problem is that I learn them by heart, so I can’t read them any more, because I can recite them. I can’t sink into them and be caught up because I know all the words.
Things I’ve read the most times—The Lord of the Rings. Cherryh’s Union/Alliance books. Bujold’s Miles books. The Dispossessed. Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand. Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman books. Mary Renault.
I don’t let myself read things more than once a year, so theoretically I haven’t read anything more than fifty times, but I didn’t institute that rule until I started having problems with how often I was reading Cyteen so I don’t know.
Each of your books or trilogies seems to tackle new forms or sub-genres, keeping readers delightfully on their toes. In several posts you’ve mentioned your enjoyment of military SF, by authors such as Jerry Pournelle or David Weber. Is military SF something you might consider for a future project?
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