John Hickman essay discussion

 

In John Hickman's essay the "Rise and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Drug Dystopia", Hickman explores themes and information based around seven dystopian-fiction novels that center around a drug that has one kind of effect or another. Only one of the novels, John Brunner's "The Stone that Never Came Down", is based on a drug that has a positive or liberating effect. The remaining six novels use drugs in their fiction as an enslaving or destructive power, that pacify or destroy the populations or individuals that use them. Hickman's main argument, or inquiry, is: why does the important subgenre of the drug-dystopia contain so few explorations of this theme? It's not as if the pharmaceutical industry has backed off or become less of a major force, as Hickman discusses. He concludes that "The best explanation is that neither writers nor their readers now perceive drugs as sufficiently intriguing or sufficiently technologically threatening as material for gripping drama", but that "Ordinary drugs in the form of chemical compounds are now so prosaic" and "Drugs of all sorts are already so commonplace that many would find improbable a threat of increased levels of medication to induce mass conformity or political demobilization". While it may not make for great drama (which might be part of the problem, if entertainment is a kind of drug), it seems that Hickman might have missed an important point. The normalization of all kinds of drugs might play a big role in glossing over serious social problems, and drugs might go a long way in helping individuals function in a dys-functional society. What if all the anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, and sleep aids disappeared? There is probably lots of room for exploring that scenario, where, if these now commonplace drugs were removed, the more banal and normalized horrors or dysphoric pressures of everyday life might be able to become more visible. As Hickman hints at, we might already occupy a dystopic landscape where drugs play a dominant role, if only if that role is in aiding bewildered individuals in coping with the tremendous stress and contradictions of life today.