Altered States

Hippies.

Hippies with PhDs in the sciences.

Hippies enthralled with Carlos Castaneda, psychedelic drugs, brain chemistry, isolation tanks, meditation, quantum physics, genetic regression and altered states of being.

I normally hate hippies, but these hippies rock!

Back in the late-Seventies Altered States caused a mild sensation in the SF community. I guess, that is; I wasn’t even a teenager back then. But I do remember the buzz about it, somehow, and I do remember either seeing it on cable teevee or renting it way back in the early days of either technology. My final datum of remembrance is that, gee, this movie is highly disappointing to me.

So let’s not talk about the movie. I don’t remember it, and from what I hear it’s not that faithful to the book. The book was published in 1978 and was written by famed screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. He won two Academy Awards writing for the big screen, Marty and Network. Plus, the book got an honorable mention in this great big SF compendium I thumb through on occasion. It went on the Acquisitions List a few years ago and was forgotten. Until I found it in the yarn store last month.


It was a quick read – one that sucked me in and had me turning the pages. I even read it at the town pool, fer cryin’ out loud, when I’m supposed to be constantly eyeballing the little ones. Four hours over three days, and you know what? I wished it was longer. I kinda like spending time with these hippies.

Well, they weren’t true hippies, even though they expounded and espoused a lot of weird-slash-fringe scientific study of the late 60s to mid 70s. The novel follows the research of Edward Jessup, an oddball genius whose interest lies in brain research. On an assignment in Mexico, he comes across a group of elderly Indians having a hallucinogenic session during some sort of tribal celebration. He joins in and has a remarkable – indeed, life-changing – experience. I won’t give away details, but it was visually well-written and had not one but two little nuggets of horror buried within the episode. Creepy.

Jessup brings a truckload of the drug back with him to upper-crusty Harvard and Beacon Hill and continues sampling the funky powder, only this time in one of those coffin-like isolation tanks. Each time he goes deeper and deeper, and, it turns out, physically regresses millions of years to protohuman form. Something to do with the odd molecular structure of the drug, or something. After a particularly harrowing episode where Jessup wakes up in a zoo with blood on his face, he decides to call in a couple of buddies for better control of these “experiments.”

The problem is, well, hubris. When isn’t it, especially with these mad scientists? Heck, it even goes back to Mary Shelly and her Victor Frankenstein, to reference a work I’ve been talking about lately. Though, to be fair, the book resembles more Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, another entry on my Acquisitions List. Anyway, Doctor Jessup believes he can control himself at the center of these physical genetic regressions, which, of course, we learn he can’t.

Chayefsky has done his research thoroughly for this, his only novel. To that end, it was extremely realistic, interesting, and drew you in. It had an almost documentary feel to it. The character of Jessup, while impossible to relate to due to his alienness as a human being, does gain your sympathy because you simply know he’s steaming full speed ahead into disaster.

If the book has any faults, I could only speak of two. Chayefsky has a tendency to wordiness, long-windedness, page-long speeches from his characters. If you remember the movie Network you may recall this. Jessup and his wife, as the main protagonists, weren’t as guilty of this as Faye Dunaway or William Holden were, but still there was a lot of gabbing goin’ on.

I also felt the ending didn’t justify the build-up. Well, that’s not true; the ending was hideous, or rather, had a hideous potentiality to it. Whether or not it leads to a bloodbath or a happily-ever-after for our married scientists, I won’t say, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Or maybe it does. Not sure.

I give it a solid B.