A chemist called Roper isolates a new drug which, if ingested, gives one telepathic control over everyone within a range of two hundred and fifteen yards.  He, and various other users employ its mesmerizing powers in various ways, leading eventually to a showdown with the government of the day who send in the troops and have no qualms about using artillery to make sure the drug and its users are destroyed.

 

In essence the book is an examination of the ramifications of the existence of such a drug. In this speculation it belongs to a creditable stable of volumes such as Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and, even more closely to his Brave New World, published seven years earlier than Davies’ novel.  Indeed it shares with Huxley’s utopian tome a consideration of the effects of complete happiness.