In his interesting Clarkesworld (Issue 98, November 2014) article “’We’re All Dreaming,’ Arctor Said: Drugs in Science Fiction, from the 1960s to the Present,” Alvaro Zinos-Amaro included a reference to Nancy Kress’ Yesterday’s Kin.

Perhaps it is science fiction writers not associated with particular subgenres who are most consistently continuing to ring interesting variations on the drug/addiction theme. In fact, we may be seeing a small renaissance of such work.

Nancy Kress’ Yesterday’s Kin (2014), though not about drugs per se, neatly literalizes the notion of drugs as changing one’s personality by inventing the drug “sugarcane,” which actually changes who one is, in the words of one of its users, into “the person he was supposed to be”—though, as it happens, that person is the never the same twice.

Read the rest of Zino-Amaro’s piece at Clarkesworld.

Clarkesworld cover by Kuldar Leement.

For more info on Yesterday’s Kin, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty.