Re: Five SF Works About Mind-Altering Drugs

On 17/05/2024 15:57, Cryptoengineer wrote:

On 5/17/2024 5:57 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:

On 09/05/2024 22:00, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

On 07/05/2024 23.39, John Savard wrote:

On 6 May 2024 14:19:23 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
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Five SF Works About Mind-Altering Drugs
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From Huxley's Brave New World to Akira's Neo-Tokyo, science fiction has dreamed up some very strange and powerful drugs...
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https://reactormag.com/five-sf-works-about-mind-altering-drugs/

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In the case of Brave New World... you didn't mention that each use of
Soma shortens one's life by a year.

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Can you provide a quote from the text to that effect?

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I don't think that's right in _Brave New World_.
Soma is very popular.  There is a scene where
it seems to be used for euthanasia for the
unproductive.  Other stories may have a drug
with that effect and possibly with that name.

 Looking at the references in the partial copy at
archive.org confirms my memories that soma is
used casually for 'holidays' from reality. It is
specifically said (by characters who may be
unreliable) to be without side effects.
 But like much in that society, there's a darker
side. I found this passage:
 Speaking of Linda, the Savage's mother, who is
massively overdosing on soma. The doctor says
it will kill her 'in a month or two', by stopping
breathing. It shortens life:
 ‘In one sense, yes,’ Dr Shaw admitted. ‘But in
another we’re actually lengthening it.’ The young
man started, uncomprehending. ‘Soma may make you
lose a few years in time,’ the doctor went on.
‘But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations
it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday
is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.’
 Nevertheless, there is discussion of people in their
60s.
 So, not a year per dose, but some life shortening.

In real life, pain relief by morphine can have that
dual effect.  Doctors sometimes talk disturbingly
about that as an unofficial form of assisted dying.
The doctor here sees Linda as not worth saving
because she is unemployed.  It is a long time since
I read the whole book, but I suspect that anybody
who is unable to work gets similar treatment,
particularly in hospital - which here it isn't:
I don't remember if that comes later.  But I see
people that the story world doesn't need, as being
disposable in that world.  Someone has to work,
in order to earn, in order to consume.  No one has
family, no one has dependents.  No one cares.
And I don't remember if the story world treats
older people with plastic surgery and sex drugs,
or if when you're old, you're done.  They don't have
people who are old.  Linda is ugly-old, and fat, and
this disgusts people.  She is rejected.  They also
find her tiresome.  I don't know if she just is
physically unfit For cosmetic repairs.  But drugging
herself to death is "a good thing" apparently.
Because she isn't a worker.
So the doctor says, "No, we can’t rejuvenate.
But I’m very glad to have had this opportunity
to see an example of senility in a human being.
Thank you so much for calling me in."
Old people are either rejuvenated if that exists,
or self-euthanised, is my interpretation.
Geriatric care doesn't exist for most doctors.
Of course, this isn't a real world we are looking
at, but a cultural dystopia which is sometimes
painted in broad strokes.  What I'm inferring
may not be intended by Aldous Huxley.  Practically
he is depriving John of his mother so that John is
alone in the brave new world of incomprehensible
Fordian human beings.  And it would be possible to
have Linda simply drop dead.  Perhaps too convenient.
What does happen debases Linda, humiliates her,
and it leaves John alone, and perhaps those are
the only reasons why what happens, happens this way.