Where are they now: science fiction with weird psychic phenomena

[mrissa]

So I just finished reading a Peter Dickinson novel that had psychics in it. And it reminded me once again: where did all the science fiction novels with psychics go? I’m not sure I miss them. There are still some places you can find things like telekinetics-mostly superpower-tinged stories like Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith’s Stranger.

Comments

[whswhs]

I kind of think of psionics as "old-style SF." It's part of the furniture of 1950s and 1960s stories, along with FTL and time travel that aren't interconvertible, or robots that default to humanoid, macroscopic force fields, personal beam weapons, and various other furniture. You can see most of the package in Star Trek and in the classic sf RPG Traveller, among other places.

From time to time, various old sf ideas fall out of use, at least among writers who are trying to come up with something innovative in scientific/speculative content. It happened with the classic "superman" story about a mutant, or a race of mutants, born with superhuman intelligence and other powers-Odd John, Slan, More than Human, and so on. That sort of story already looked old-fashioned when psionics was at its height

[dichroic]

Interesting question. It was across a broad range of SF, too, On the one hand you have someone like Zenna Henderson writing something that is, while IMO SF rather than fantasy, very much on the softer girl-cooties side; on the other you have someone like Larry Niven churning out a story about a man who gets lost in fog and ends up in an alternate world where telepathy is standard.

I can think of a couple more recent examples - the YA Cassidy Jones series, for one - but they're rarer and also the telepathy in them seems to be more restricted.

[sartorias]

We have them in Exordium, too. But I guess it's now considered an old-fashioned trope?

[mrissa]

I don't know! I don't think it should be, but I don't want to get rid of planetary diplomacy novels either.

[sartorias]

Me either! I love all those tropes and am happy to read them.

[dancinghorse]

I was told by no fewer than three agents, late last year, that psi is now considered "fantasy" and a space opera with psi in it is a complete no-sale.

While telling me they adored the book and loved reading it and blahdy-blah.

Book View Cafe it is, then.

[mrissa]

The last time someone reported hearing that sort of news about a sub-genre, several editors protested that they liked that sub-genre, were not closed off to it, etc. So I hope that lots of people--including some who happen to work as editors--pick yours up from BVC.

[dancinghorse]

Thank you! It's out in April. The POD is GORGEOUS. Just finished it up today, waiting to pop the ISBN in.

[rosefox]

Have I already encouraged you to submit it to PW for review consideration? If not, here's the link:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/galleytracker

Please pass that on to your fellow BVCers--I'd love to see more submissions from all of you. :)

[arkuat]

Yeah, looks like debunking pushed it into fantasy.

I did raise an eyebrow when you suggested girl cooties, though, thinking of Alfred Bester and (as dichroic mentioned above) Larry Niven. The latter at least was still writing "hard" sf centered around psi powers well into the 1980s, and went pretty nuts with it. On the other hand, when I think of the stuff I've read, Butler is the one who captures how horrifying telepathy might be, yet Butler too abandoned this trope in her later works.

And just showing that every change takes longer to show up in teevee scifi, like whswhs said: Bab-5 in the 1990s.

[dancinghorse]

Genre lines have hardened, I think. Anne McCaffrey was a John Campbell protegee and her dragons were designed in very sfnal fashion, but the books are now considered fantasy. Because dragons, and low levels of tech. Plus, of course, psi powers.

Even in the Cretaceous however, i.e. late Seventies, Lester Del Rey was telling me that "Fantasy readers seem to tolerate science fiction in their fantasy, but science fiction readers do not return the favor." So while the boundaries have shifted and solidified, the basis for the distinctions goes back pretty far.

[whswhs]

In somewhat the same spirit, I've had people assure me that Star Wars is fantasy, even though it has not one single fantastic element that isn't long established in SF: starships, energy weapons, robots, and psi powers were old hat in 1950s SF. Of course, it's not hard science fiction, but the idea that "fantasy" is something that attempts to be hard science fiction but fails to meet its standards strikes me as just silly-fantasy is a distinct genre with its own positive features. If you cut off my arms and legs you haven't made me into a snake.

[arkuat]

I've long now been convinced that science fiction is a particularly bratty and demanding subgenre of fantasy. I do love it so.