Friday, October 20, 2017

Ten top imaginary drugs in fiction

Jeff Noon's latest novel is A Man of Shadows.

One of his top ten "modern examples from the pharmacopoeia of dangerous delights" in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:
Dylar (White Noise by Don DeLillo)

This may be the ultimate drug of escape, for the simple fact that it removes the human fear of death. Soon people are desperate to find black-market supplies of the still experimental substance. Philosophical questions abound. If we have no sense of our own mortality, can we still call ourselves human? Would religion have a place, would art be created in anything like the same quantities? And then there are the side effects, which consist mainly of losing the ability to “distinguish words from things”. The very mention of the phrase “speeding bullet” is enough to cause a user to dive to the floor for cover. Now that’s scary.
Read about the other entries on the list.

White Noise is among Brian Boone's twenty top books that are absolute dorm room essentials.

--Marshal Zeringue