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

[alecaustin]

A thought I didn't bring up when we talked about this earlier - cyberpunk may have helped kill off the psychic thread of SF, both by providing an emphasis on near futures that focused on more technological kinds of 'human evolution', and by helping set the stage for the fixation on the singularity that spread out from Vinge to infest space opera for a while there.

There's also an argument to be made that what marginalized psychic powers in SF was the emergence of programmers and other computer professionals as the primary audience for its written form...

[supergee]

Blogging this; thanx

[redstapler]

I don't know where it went, but I can tell you that Anne McCaffery's Pegasus and subsequent Rowan/Damia/their lineage series was my jam.

When I got older and did a re-read, I found myself horrified by Damia and Afra's relationship, and even more so by the "He's gay but aliens made him fall in love with a woman!" thing that happens in the third or fourth book.

I would like more stuff like the Pegasus stuff, and even The Rowan, but less sexual squickiness, please.

[mrissa]

I'm beginning to think that "I read it when I was older and it had WHAT in it?" should be called a McCaffrey Experience. Because yeah.

[redstapler]

I never read any of the Pern stuff, but I can only imagine what ridiculousness they contained.

[dancing_crow]

Really - It has already been whacked by the Suck Fairy with the heavy and brutish Stick of Suck, Modren Edition. Do they need more classifying beyond that?

Aside from the undeniable pleasure of sorting and naming experiences, which is not negligible.

[mrissa]

I like the idea of the quilt lady. Is the rest of the book worthwhile?

One of the above commenters says of an Anne McCaffrey series that it's their jam, and honestly that's why I'm not writing psionics SF. It's not my jam. I loved Intervention and the Galactic Milieu trilogy, but not in an "I should do that!" way, in an "I am 12 years old and Uncle Rogi is fandom" sort of way.

Also I really love that the message you took from that Asimov story is that we are the field, not that Isaac Asimov specifically was the field. Could've gone either way for a lot of people, but not for you, and I appreciate that about you.

[redbird]

I know David Brin used psychic stuff in some of his books, such as Startide Rising. Did he stop doing that? (I stopped reading him a while back.)

[mrissa]

He didn't do it in all of his books, and he hasn't been publishing very many books lately, so it's really hard to say that he stopped vs. the one or two there have been have not happened to contain it.