In Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, telepathy and other metapsychic abilities are powerful enough to unite the interstellar civilization whereas, in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, telepathy is extremely weak except in one species, the Chereionites, who work against the Terran Empire. In James Blish's "This Earth of Hours," telepathy unites the galactic Central Empire which spreads out along the spiral arms where it will come into conflict with the Terrestrial Matriarchy.
There are other examples, of course - for example, Isaac Asimov's mutant Mule and Second Foundation contend by using the mental power of hypnotic telepathy (?) - but I particularly commend Anderson, Blish and May as writers about interstellar civilizations.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm pretty sure Poul Anderson had the Ythrian intelligence agent working for both the Domain and the Empire in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND saying telepathy was never of much use for most races because other means of communicating were more practical and convenient.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015) wrote some stories in which "communipaths" link the worlds of the interstellar civilization. (I've read only one of these.)
The Warhammer 40,000 tabletop strategy game and books set in that universe mention use of "astropaths." A W40k resource states, "Capable of sending and receiving psychic messages across interstellar space, they form the Imperium's vast communications network, and are vital for keeping its widely scattered worlds connected." Astropaths aren't volunteers; they're conscripted — one might even say, enslaved — and the training process has a fairly high rate of killing them or driving them insane.
Foolishly, I forgot to add that at the end of Christopher Stasheff's The Warlock In Spite of Himself, the title character deduces that pro-totalitarian time travelers are trying to destroy civilization on a planet with a high proportion of telepaths, because in the future the bad guys come from, telepathy was vital to speedy communication between the worlds of a democratic interstellar society.
Kaor, DAVID!
Many thanks for these interesting comments. Alas, since I've not a role gamer or have read these stories, I can't really comment about them. But, I too have foolishly overlooked one instance in Poul Anderson's Terran Empire stories about a race able to mentally "communicate" over interstellar distances: the Ice People of Altai, the dwindling native intelligent race of that planet. In Section IX of "A Message in Secret," Juchi Shaman said to Dominic Flandry (after speaking to two of the Dweller): "I have said who you are and whence you come. They are not surprised. Before I spoke your need, he said their--I do not know just what the word means, but it has something to do with communication--he said they could reach Terra itself, as far as mere distance was concerned, but only through...dreams?"
Flandry was astonished and, after some quick reflection on how long men had been searching for some equivalent of FTL radio, exclaimed "Telepathy?...I've never heard of telepathy with so great a range!" Juchi replied: "No, not that, or they would have warned us of this Merseian situation before now. It is nothing that I quite understand." Juchi added: "He said to me, all the powers they possess look useless in this situation."
Sean
Post a Comment