God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

Reality is...Gainesville, Florida, punk rockers battling a fire-breathing dragon...Sparrow taking flight on wings of song after tuning in and turning on...the General, who keeps forgetting that he's not real...Sparrow and her lover Tom learning that reality isn't what it used to be.

Genres: Science Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2011

About the author

I have a YouTube channel called "I, Nerdius" where I post videos about all things science fiction and other genres, including nonfiction. I also post videos about writing.

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never really been a drug person in real life (I'm weird enough as it is), but I enjoy drug novels like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Through a Scanner Darkly. This one is even a bit weirder and trippier than those. Fun times.

[Jean-Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased this book from the author at Necronomicon convention in Tampa way back in 2004. It sat on my shelves for probably a decade before I read it. The original reason I picked it up was because of the illustrations by artist Andy Lee who I had met at a few earlier conventions and who actually helped my friends and I out with a hotel room for Dragon Con one year, possibly also in 2004, although I doubt he'd remember the event. Andy specializes in black ink artwork painted with a brush, kind of like a living calligraphy, I commissioned a skeleton key painting from him the same year that he helped us with the room at Dragon Con, I haven't seen him at conventions much recently, I hope he's still active. Anyway, back to the review! The author was very nice and was promoting his book so I picked it up, but just never got around to reading it until I was spending a lot of time reading on the elliptical at the gym one summer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the book. Quick summary that hopefully doesn't have too much spoilers is that there was a government experiment on a drug that could give someone super powers (sound familiar? King used this trope in Firestarter and a number of other books) and this story takes place a few years later down the line when one of the recipients of the powers is stirring deep in the bunker where the government has kept him locked away kind of like in Akira... Anyway, this book hits a lot of tropes, but the characters are for the most part engaging and some of the lines are catchy enough that they entered my own personal lexicon: "Eat all your goddamn peaches!"

Not sure how difficult it would be to pick up a copy of this book, Marietta Publishing doesn't seem like a big name in the publishing world and every time I buy something directly from an author I wonder if it is a limited release title. In any case, if you can find a copy pick it up, the book is fun and the art is worth the price of admission. Fans of sci-fi, horror, and super heroes won't be disappointed.

[michael kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like this sort of thing, you have found the right book

I do like weird, different reality books. This one is well written, very trippy. I couldn't put it down reminds me of early work of Hunter Thomas or the werewolf book by Thomas Tessler. However it is more of a feel of these author's works, this is very original and captures the 80's Punk scene really well. Very Strange Very Good.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom and Sparrow, his lover, are part of the punk music scene in present-day Gainesville, Florida. Sparrow is part of a band that has a gig at Dave-O’s, the local punk music club. Earlier that day, they score some LSD, that was not meant for them, from Galactic Bill, the local drug source.

Meantime, near Atlanta, Georgia, a young woman named Hanna wakes up in a suburban house next to a fat, hairy guy. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there, except for flashbacks of having served in the Vietnam War, even though she is nowhere near old enough to have served. Hanna gets in a car and heads south, not knowing where she is going. Along the way, she meets The General, an older man in uniform who certainly remembers Hanna.

When they reach Gainesville, Hanna realizes that The General is some sort of alien whose task is to absorb certain people, and thereby become part of Jovah. She realizes this after seeing The General swallow Galactic Bill whole, like a snake eating a rat. Back at the punk club, the LSD begins to have an effect, and suddenly, everyone at the club is flying, as long as the music keeps playing. When a malfunctioning amp stops the music, gravity takes over, violently. While in the air, Tom, Sparrow and their friends watch as a giant mechanical dragon lays waste to Gainesville, like a modern-day Godzilla movie. They can’t help but think that this is the ultimate drug trip, but this is reality (that’s the magic word). They meet Hanna and The General, who must absorb Hanna to become "whole."

This book does a fine job at messing with conceptions of reality. One can almost hear the punk music in the background. This one is really strange and really good.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was honestly considering rating this lower as I was working through the first full third of the book. It tended to jump all over the place as if it were an acid trip instead of a story about people on a major acid trip (I will neither confirm nor deny that I have specific, intimate and extensive knowledge of the subject at hand).
But after the first part of the book wanders around the story begins to take shape, sense is made from nonsense. Then we reach the ending and things get seriously trippy. Out of this world trippy. I have to admit, once the story picked up I couldn't put the book down. I had my alarm set for five a.m. and said I wasn't reading any later than one a.m. At three-thirty I finally finished and was able to get some sleep. It does start slow but it really ramps up the story line. It turned out to be a pretty good story and well worth reading.