Tuesday 6 December 2016

Telepathy II

See Telepathy and Telepathy In Fiction And Reality?

We mentioned Poul Anderson's, James Blish's, Robert Silverberg's and Mike Carey's treatments of telepathy but, of course, this is a standard sf concept so there must be many examples. In fact, Asimov has some telepathic robots and Alfred Bester has a society based on telepathy. I have not read Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, which I understand is a major telepathy novel.

I still wish that Poul Anderson had written a Superman novel. Superman began as sf but then launched a new composite genre. Telepathy is not a Kryptonian power but Clark Kent is able to meet people with other extraordinary abilities and in fact becomes friendly with one young telepath in two episodes of Smallville. Again I wonder what it would be like to have real telepaths around. Young Ryan is so intuitive or insightful that Lex Luthor begins to suspect that he can read minds. Would concern for Ryan metamorphose into attempts to exploit his ability? Ryan is able to warn Clark to beware of Lex...

A novel about Superman by a major sf writer like Poul Anderson would probably concentrate on making the Kryptonian powers seem real and (slightly) less implausible and therefore would probably not introduce characters with yet other powers. However, Anderson presents a credible account of telepathy in "Journeys End."

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