Clark Ashton Smith Review: The Plutonian Drug

Maybe I’m naive but I didn’t expect such an acceptance of drug use by early fantasy and horror writers. I just read Algernon Blackwood’s “The Prayer” which basically used psychedelic, mind-altering for the glory of God. Back when I was posting about Sherlock Holmes stories, Doyle presented cocaine as safe and helpful. Now Smith has a pro-drug story. Nancy Reagan’s influence doesn’t go as far back as I thought.

Back when Smith wrote “The Plutonian Drug,” marijuana was still legal, cocaine had only been removed from Coca-Cola a few months prior. LSD wouldn’t be invented for another few years but wouldn’t outlawed for decades. Of course, Smith lived through prohibition of alcohol and may have been disillusioned by such laws

Okay, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the openness to drugs. But my second surprise was that unlike virtually every other writer of the time, Smith was late with his prediction of the first moon landing.

Usually science fiction writers overestimate scientific progress, writing that we would have flying cars and moon colonies by the 60s. In “The Plutonian Drug,” Smith underestimated–man didn’t make it to the Moon until 1975 (although once there, they discovered “fossil lichen” that cured all forms of cancer–that more than makes up for it).

In 1990, astronauts on Pluto discovered another fossil lichen which they called Plutonium. Doing the math, it took 15 years from landing on the Moon (238,900 miles away) to Pluto (2.66 to 3.3 billion miles away). I suppose if other planets were literally covered with wonder drugs, it would speed up progress.

Smith’s plutonium was a chemical compound in the form of a powder, not an element (that wouldn’t be discovered until 1940). Smith’s powder could be used as a drug to distort the passage of time.

Balcoth, the protagonist of the story, mentioned that he had experimented with cannabis but was disappointed by it. Plutonium allows him to simultaneously see backwards and forwards in time. Usually a user can see several hours both ways but the Balcoth’s vision to the future is abruptly cut short. The doctor who had supplied the drug was alarmed by this reaction but Balcoth waved it off. Shortly after leaving the doctor, Balcoth is jumped by a mugger and all his vision comes to an end.

“The Plutonian Drug” is similar to Harlan Ellison’s story, “Seeing” from his collection Strange Wine. In that case, a surgical transplant allows a recipient to see backwards and forwards in time but Ellison uses this to a much different conclusion.

Robert A. Heinlein’s first published story, “Life-Line,” is about a machine that measures life backwards and forwards but again, it was a vastly different story.

Smith described the perception of seeing through time better than Ellison or Heinlein (in fairness, Heinlein didn’t really attempt to do so). Ellison’s Strange Wine is my favorite collection of short stories but Smith’s description was somehow clinical and flowery. Ellison’s description was very good but Smith managed to surpass it.

Smith was pleased with the story but today the ending is anticlimactic. At the time of writing, this scenario would have been new to readers but, after so many authors followed in Smith’s footsteps, the ending wasn’t surprising. As I was reading, I didn’t even think the ending was meant to be a surprise. I don’t think this was Smith’s fault; weird fiction just absorbed so many of his ideas.

Smith dismissed many of his stories but was proud of this one. The ending and some of the historical details will seem dated for modern readers but it’s worth reading for the description of vision through time.