_Drugs as Sensation-Enhancers_: Drugs whose effects are achieved through amplified or extended bodily sensation-response, perhaps analogous to marijuana in our society. _Drugs as Reality-Testers_: Drugs which permit the user to penetrate the “real” realities beyond the surface manifestations of daily life. _Drugs as Mind-Injurers_: Drugs used as weapons in biochemical warfare, aimed at the mind. _Drugs as Means of Communication_: Drugs that have the specific property of opening hitherto unknown channels of communication between minds. Two distinct attitudes toward the use of mind-related drugs have manifested themselves in science fiction. One is cautionary: that any extraordinary indulgence in extraordinary drugs is likely to rot the moral fiber of the user, leading to lassitude and general decay of the individual or of society, and ultimately, perhaps, aiding the establishment of a totalitarian order. The other is visionary and utopian: that through the employment of drugs mankind can attain spiritual or psychological powers not ordinarily available, and by so doing can enter into a new and higher phase of existence. This latter attitude has become far more widespread since 1965, when middle-class use of hallucinogenic and euphoric drugs in western industrial civilization first began to take on the aspect of a major cultural shift. The cultural assumptions of science fiction as a whole can clearly be seen to follow, rather than to lead, public opinion: most science fiction published in the twentieth century has been mass-market commercial fiction which, however daring its departures from everyday reality, has generally tended to adopt the conventional moral dogmas of middle-class society, as does most commercial fiction. Science fiction of the 1920’s and 1930’s reveals a remarkable degree of racism no longer acceptable to general readers in what they read (though they may cling to prejudices in daily life). Science fiction of the 1940’s and 1950’s is marked by casual sexism likewise no longer officially acceptable. And science fiction in general has shown a strong, if implicit, bias in favor of capitalism, the work ethic, Puritan sexual morality, and other pillars of western industrial society. Drug-users in science-fiction stories until quite recently were analogous to heavy users of alcohol in mainstream fiction: their reliance on a consciousness-altering substance was seen as a sign of weakness of character. In the past decade there has been a major cultural shift in our society toward hedonistic behavior, at first furtively, now openly; and this, after the customary lag, has been translated into a shift in the direction of permissiveness in the conventional moral attitudes expressed by popular entertainment. (The private behavior of individuals is almost always far more scandalous than the standards of behavior the public demands in entertainment or