Mental Powers In The Galaxy

Two paradoxes:

decades-old futuristic anticipations have become dated;

sf writers imagine far future civilizations that, in their time, are ancient so that our present is their remote, either legendary or forgotten, past.

Mental powers are a science fictional theme and the galaxy is a science fictional setting. But what are mental powers? What are we already able to do mentally? Mental abilities include observation, learning, thought, concentration, imagination and self-control:

'AS A MAN OF DISCERNMENT STANDING ON A ROCKY EMINENCE, BEHOLDETH THOSE WHO ARE BELOW AND IN DISTRESS so doth the sage, who by his wakefulness hath put to flight his ignorance, look down upon suffering mankind from the Heights of Wisdom which he hath attained'

- The Buddha  

-copied from here.

Buddha said, "A man who conquers himself is greater than one who conquers a thousand men in battle." 

-copied from here.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

Lao Tzu

-copied from here.

However, the word, "power," suggests either a superior ability or control over others. Superior physical abilities would be "super powers," like flight or super-strength, whereas superior mental powers would include telepathy or coercive hypnosis, i.e., mental control over the actions of others.

Asimov's Mule and Second Foundationers exercise coercive hypnosis on a galactic scale - although Seldon's psychohistory was about the mathematics of populations, not about the control of individuals.

James Blish's interstellar explorers encounter telepathy first in the microcosm, then in a Central Empire of the galaxy, (see here and also here) whereas Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire learns that the rival Merseian Roidhunate is served by a universal telepath.

The mental power of prescience is exercised on an interstellar scale in Frank Herbert's Dune History.

However, of the four authors cited here, Anderson and Blish are head and shoulders above either Asimov or Herbert.