Sci-Fi on Drugs

Lem’s “The Futurlogical Congress” is similar to the other sci-fi works that we have read in that it cautions readers about progress by exploring the consequences of innovating to a point of no return. In the novel, it was evident that drugs had begun to be used both as a necessity to escape the crises of reality and as a controlling mechanism by those in power. At the Futurological Congress, naked secretaries with portable supplies of drugs stood at the ready to serve members of the Congress, and when a revolting crowd needed to be controlled, LTN or ‘love thy neighbor’ bombs were set off, drugging the entire crowd in an effort to cease the rebellion. After being evacuated into a sewer, Tichy’s hallucinations due to the drugs in his system magnified his concerns about the future, which stemmed from his observations at the Futurological Congress about drug use as a coping mechanism. In his hallucinogen induced dreams, humanity is struggling with a dire population crisis in which there simply is not enough room on Earth for all inhabitants. As opposed to dealing with this problem, all of humanity is continuously drugged, a state referred to as psychemization, so that their life is one big luxurious hallucination. However, waking up from these drug-induced alternative realities is not an option, because without the psychem, the deteriorated civilization could not endure itself. Because the only solution is to continue masking the horrors of reality, the innovation of psychem in the novel brought humanity to a point of no return.