The Butterfly Kid: Difference between revisions

''[[The Butterfly Kid]]'' is a [[Science Fiction]] novel written by Chester Anderson and published in 1967; it has been described by one reviewer as "a science-fiction novel, a detective story, and a comedy of manners (or lack thereof) that depicts Greenwich Village undergoing a psychedelic sneak attack of unknown origin". It is most commonly referred to as "psychedelic SF", and as such actually was nominated for the [[Hugo Award]] for Best Novel in 1968 (it lost out to ''[[Lord of Light]]'' by [[Roger Zelazny]]).

 

 

 

It turns out someone is distributing a new drug -- something called "Reality Pills". And as Chester and his friend Michael discover when they sample the drug themselves, it's not only a hallucinogenic, the hallucinations it causes are solid and real and can affect the world around them. The sole source of this new drug is Laszlo Scott, the pariah of Greenwich Village. Scott is a talentless would-be poet and a conniver who delights in abusing everyone while at the same time hating almost everyone he meets. The Reality Pill clearly gives him a new status to lord over the other denizens of the Village -- but where is he getting it from?

Later, once Chester is rescued by his friends, it becomes a race against time to <s>herd cats</s> assemble a strike team of hippies to chase after the Lobsters and prevent them from dosing the entire city with the Reality Pill as their next step up in "local testing". Chester understands what the Lobsters don't -- that seven million humans with the ability to physically manifest their every fear, prejudice and hatred will be the ''real'' doomsday scenario. But then he realizes that they have a secret weapon that the Lobsters cannot possibly stand against... a briefcase full of Reality Pills.

 

 

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* [[Big Applesauce]]: Almost all the action in the novel takes place in Greenwich Village; the climactic battle is fought on the banks of the reservoir in Central Park.

* [[Blunt Metaphors Trauma]]: While Ktch, the leader of the Lobsters, speaks English very well, he doesn't quite have all the idioms down:

:Amusingly, Chester takes up this particular mangled aphorism and uses it himself later in the novel.

* [[Book Ends]]: The book begins and ends with Sean producing butterflies.

* [[A Good Name for a Rock Band]]: "Sativa and the Tripouts" follows the classic "X and the Ys" pattern, obviously.

* [[Granola Girl]]: Sativa has elements of this, as do the other (human) female characters.

* [[Helpful Hallucination]]: A frequent effect of the Reality Pill.

* [[High Times Future]]: Implied to be imminent in the alternate 1976 in which the story takes place, and pretty much a ''fait accompli'' in the unspecified "now" of the narrator.

** Also, the unintended effect of the alien torture machine on Chester.

* [[New Age Retro Hippie]]: Practically every human character we see, but there's no "Retro" here -- in the 1976 of the book, the hippie counterculture is still a vibrant and living thing, almost at the tipping point where it stops being "counter" and becomes the culture. And the narration suggests that that's ''exactly'' what happened after the events of the book.

* [[Physical God]]: Michael manifests a "small pantheon" the first time he takes the Reality Pill: [[The Rolling Stones|Mick]], the god of teenyboppers; Moe, the god of tourists; Phlipout and Phlippina, twin dieties of disorder; Fellatia, a goddess whose sphere is unspecified but is pretty obvious; Buldge, the goddess of minor disasters ("whose merest glance could delay a chick's period two weeks."); Toke, the god of Pot; Chuck, the god of miscellany; and Zap, deity of changes. While they exist, they are pretty much the real deal, though subject to Michael's control.

* [[The Quisling]]: Laszlo Scott.

* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: The gang Chester and Michael assemble to battle the Lobsters at the reservoir.

* [[Reality Warper]]: This is effectively what taking the Reality Pill makes one.

* [[Stage Magician]]: When Michael encounters fellow author Tom Waters, he (Tom) is working as a fortune teller and trickster at a traveling carnival. (In real life, Tom Waters was indeed a professional magician and member of the Magic Castle.)

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: Blue lobsters, in this case.

{{quote|However, I was still being tortured. All around me I could see tiny noises intertwining like spaghetti in the air. My body was covered with acute perceptions of color in flux—solemn reds, introspective blues, pulsating greens and browns—all intimate and not to be ignored. My ears were full of the flavor of hot buttered corn with salt and lemon juice. (And oh, yes, I was still hungry, which felt a bit like being underwater.) I could taste smoothness and abrasiveness and sharpness alternating in intricate patterns of what was not quite motion, and the temperature of the air—night-cool, growing cooler—smelled . . . I don’t have a word for how it smelled. Like calculus, perhaps?

This was not at all unpleasant. In fact, I’d spent lots of money in my day for exotic pharmaceuticals I’d hoped would produce some such effects.}}

* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: Well, the future of ''1967'' -- set in a 1976 where there are videophones, military surplus hovercraft, a Bicentennial exposition, and a Hippie counterculture that is still flourishing instead of having burnt out with the rise of Watergate -- oh, and no disco.

* [[Water Source Tampering]]: The lobsters' plan to dump the Reality Pill in liquid form into the New York City reservoir in Central Park.

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