is great correspondence between the main drug-using and science-fiction-reading segments of the population, and it is worthwhile to examine science fiction for insights into the use of mind-altering drugs and for views of what drug use may lie in the future.
For the present research project I have compiled a group of English-language short stories and novels which deal with the use of mind-altering drugs, all written since 1900 and falling within the literary category of science fiction. I have avoided inclusion of that large body of stories dealing with drugs whose effects are primarily on the body rather than the mind: immortality serums, for example. Some of these stories date from the earliest years of the science-fiction genre, notably from the 1920's and 1930's when mass-market science-fiction magazines first began publication. Not surprisingly, however, the majority of the stories within the study date from the post-1965 period, when the use of drugs first pervaded the national life to its present extent. For reasons explained in the accompanying introductory essay, science fiction is more often a reflection of existing societal trends than a prediction of trends to come. The upsurge in drug use is precisely mirrored by the upsurge in the use of such themes in science fiction.
Science fiction is as much a guide to where we are as it is a vision of where we are going. A literature so popular with the young, commanding so intense and devoted a following, can be of significant value in revealing the patterns contemporary society is taking and will take in the years just ahead.
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