Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

I just can't find any books with telepaths in them in a sci fi setting that are in books. Thinking of things like Firefly (River Tam for example), Star Trek or Babylon 5 all have telepathy. I have been looking for a book that does it but to no success. Any suggestions?

MZB's Darkover had some telepathy, as did McCaffery's Talents series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/4944....

Julian May's books including the Intervention series and the other books in the various related series are strewn with telepaths, telekinesis, etc.

They are some of my favorites.

Norstrilia

It is an oldie but a goodie.

Try Joan Vinge's Psion and Alien Blood: Psion / Catspaw, both about telepaths. And Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man has some interesting work around "peepers" -- telepaths.

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg is brilliant but polarizing.

Brilliant! Thank you!

The D'neeran Factor

mark wrote: "Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg is brilliant but polarizing."

I just noticed that "in a scifi setting" was specified. sadly I must take back my recommendation! Dying Inside is set, if I recall correctly, in the 70s.

In a near future "scifi setting", probably the newest, and sort of odd, telepathy story is Crosstalk by COnnie WIllis. Am around 2/3 through it - sort of curious how will wrap up.
Far from my favorite Willis book (who I like) - but worth mentioning since only out a few months

Robert, thanks for the tip on the new Connie Willis, I hadn´t seen it...
As for Sci fi with telepaths, the Patternmaster series by Octavia E. Butler. You can take a look at this wikipedia link on the order in which to read the books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern...
I am not really sure I actually liked this series, but I wasn´t able to stop reading it until I finshed the last book, and it definitely left an impression... Anyone here read it?

Diana wrote: "Robert, thanks for the tip on the new Connie Willis, I hadn´t seen it...
As for Sci fi with telepaths, the Patternmaster series by Octavia E. Butler. You can take a look at this wiki..."

I loved that series, but I pretty much love anything that she writes with a sci-fi feel to it.

Diana wrote: As for Sci fi with telepaths, the Patternmaster series by Octavia E. Butler. You can take a look at this wiki..."
I have four of the five books in hard copy. It looks like I should begin with Wild Seed, then Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, I don't have Survivor--but it appears that Butler "disowned this book", so, I'll probably just go on to Patternmaster. I probably would have read these in chronological order, if I hadn't seen your posts. Thank you, Diana and Andy.

CD wrote: "Julian May's books including the Intervention series and the other books in the various related series are strewn with telepaths, telekinesis, etc.

They are some of my..."

Charles wrote: "I don't have Survivor--but it appears that Butler "disowned this book""

I searched forever for that book. If it ever gets published again, I'll buy it, but for now, you can read it at http://librebood.com/libre/Octavia%20... without having to pay $70 for a tattered book. There's also a prequel to Survivor in Blood Child and Other Stories

The Psy/Changeling series by Nalini Singh. Her creation and imagery of the PsyNet is unrivaled.

Many of Philip K Dick novels include psychic powers, but in particular Ubik (all the typical psy-powers along with anti-psy-power skills are fundamental to the plot).

But as with all PKD, don't expect the typical media portrayal of psychic powers (or the story in general).

Also, psy-powers play at least some part in all of these PKD works:

The World Jones Made (precognition)
Dr. Bloodmoney (telekinesis, telepathy)
The Game-Players of Titan (telepathy, precognition, telekinesis)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (precognition)
The Ganymede Takeover (telepathy/hive mind)
Galactic Pot-Healer (precognition, telepathy/hive mind)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (all the standard powers)

(Not to mention his many, many short stories)

People, even scientists, tended to believe in the possibility of telepathy more in the 1950s through early 1970s. After Uri Geller's spoon bending powers were discredited in the 1970s, fewer people took such claims seriously. Therefore, it appears less often in science fiction from the 1980s onward.

I like to read classic science fiction of the 1930s through 1960s. For me, the frequent assumption of paranormal telepathy abilities is a flaw I tolerate, along with the existence of Martians and Venusians. For you, I suppose, it would be a good thing.

Like I said, most classic science fiction writers from the early 1970s on back have books where telepathic abilities is a norm. For example, Andre Norton has telepathy between cats and humans, almost all of Mark Clifton's short story work, Henderson, Heinlein, Asimov, LeGuin, Bradley, Dickson.... You can pretty much pick any old time science fiction author, read a plot blurb for a work, and find many with telepathy. In fact, I think it would be much harder to find an old time author that didn't have telepathy as a feature in any of his or her works. Larry Niven perhaps?

Edit: Never mind. Niven's World of Ptavvs has telepathy.

So, here's my challenge. Find a popular science fiction author with >30% of his/her output before 1975, who didn't have telepathy in any of his/her major works.

Books with telepaths I've recently read are:

A Thousand Words for Stranger by Julie E. Czerneda
Pilgrimage: The Book of the People by Zenna Henderson
Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key

A book I am reading right now has telepathy between man and man's best friend: Hexed by Kevin Hearne, but it's urban fantasy. A more science fiction way to have verbal communication with a dog is to enhance the dog, as in Lost and Found by Alan Dean Foster, but then you lose the telepathy angle.

Thousand Words for Stranger had a short story at the end where there was a dog that enhanced as well putting a chip in the alien scientist so they would make a good team.

@Dan - OK, I'll bite, which Asimov? It's been 20 years since I read his great books.

Telepathy is all throughout almost all of Asimov's greatest novels. He calls telepathy "mentalics", but it's largely the same thing. In Foundation, his character The Mule is telepathic. Humans with telepathic abilities is the reason Foundation was started. Daneel, the telepathic robot, and star of his The Caves of Steel series worked secretly behind Seldon. Asimov created a world in the Foundation universe called Gaia, whose residents all had telepathic powers. In Nemesis, the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro, collectively, constitute a sentient and telepathic organism. Telepathy is clearly a major part of Asimov's works.

For more information, here's the wikipedia page on mentalic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalic and The Mule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_(F....

Intriguing. That certainly wasn't the core of what I remembered about those books/series. I remember the "future history" stuff about statistics and trends and extrapolation, and how the Mule was an anomaly that messed up all the math.

Ah well, as soon as I finish reading all these new books, maybe I'll re-read those.

About half the total number of pages of the Foundation series (if you count the robot novels--I do because Asimov tied them into the Foundation during the 1980s) were written in the 1950s. The other half were written 1983-93. This later half emphasized the telepathy more. I would estimate it contained about 80-90% of the amount Asimov used the theme.

David Weber's hero Honor Harrington has a telepathic connection to her treecat Nimitz. In later books you find that the treecats are in fact a telepathic species.

Slan - a. e. van vogt