Metaphorical Use
Octane became well known in American popular culture in the mid- and late-sixties, when gasoline companies boasted of "high octane" levels in their gasoline in advertisements.
These commercials disappeared by the time of the 1973 Oil Crisis, which spared gasoline companies the need to compete via advertising. "Octane" was rarely cited in non-technical contexts over the next two decades.
The compound adjective "high-octane" was apparently first used in its figurative sense (i.e., without reference to gasoline) in a book review of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park (1990), which appeared in the newspaper New York Newsday. The review by Gregory Feeley called the novel "intellectually provocative, high-octane entertainment", and was quoted the following year in the front matter of the novel's paperback edition, which sold more than 15 million copies in the United States. By the mid-nineties, the phrase was commonly being used as an intensifier and has apparently found a place in modern English vernacular.
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