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• 1 2016-05-16T17:47:35-07:00 "The Golden Elixir" 3 plain 2016-05-18T13:06:55-07:00 “The Golden Elixir” is a short story by Paul Ernst that was published in the September 1931 edition of Weird Tales. The story revolves around a narrator who is visited by one of his colleagues who has recently created an elixir that separates his mind and body. Throughout the story, the mind visits the narrator to explain what they are planning to do with the elixir while the body attends social gatherings and other required activities. However, because the mind is split from the body, both pieces of consciousness are limited in what they can do. The body is unable to make rational decisions while the mind is incorporeal and mostly a spirit. This story shows what can happen when a character challenges the natural order. Once the colleague splits himself into “irrational” and “rational” parts, he becomes vulnerable to events that he was trying to avoid from the start. A person is supposed to be a combination of both of their parts, and messing with their creation is tampering with.
   
  Tangentially, the character’s sloppy priorities can also be attributed to human’s natural ego when it comes to science. Humans since the beginning of time have found out new ways to change the world around them. The elixir is an example of focusing the change towards the self rather than improvement, since the elixir is used for selfish (and unnecessary) reasons, such as using the body to attend a party while the mind reads more literature for fun. “The Golden Elixir” is an interesting story because it is a sharp example of how fragile the human condition is when it is not ruled by both forms of consciousness. With the narrator not experiencing the elixir, we are given a secondhand account of a man’s downfall while the narrator waxes poetic about the laws of physics and how they have been broken. With the numerous amount of self­indulgent science fiction stories that rely on having a courageous and flawless character save the day, it’s refreshing to see the opposite of that. Those who enjoyed “War of the Worlds” and “The Sentinel” will enjoy this story. Both the retrospective point of view and introspective subject matter are interesting and apt questions to ask today with the ever­increasing popularity of online presence and consciousness.