Angels And Aurigeans II

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In both James Blish's The Star Dwellers and Poul Anderson's "Kyrie," human beings name one of the energy beings "Lucifer."

Introducing "Kyrie," Poul Anderson identifies three "fantastical concepts" in the story:

FTL by hyperspatial jumps;

intelligent plasma vortices;

"...telepathy across cosmic distances."

-Poul Anderson, "Kyrie" IN Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), pp. 344-354 AT XV, p. 344.

 

He comments:

 

"'That's what the story wanted. It's generally best to go along." (ibid.)

 

Yes but, in hard sf, telepathy, like FTL, can be scientifically rationalized as James Blish did several times and as Anderson himself did when presenting the universal telepath, Aycharaych, in his Technic History. A scientific rationale for instantaneous interstellar telepathy would have helped "Kyrie."

 

An Angel emits radio waves which a radio receiver transforms into sounds, thus into English words, although the Angel communicates only by means of the radio waves and probably assumes that human beings do this as well. However, the Angels have some different way to communicate with each other instantaneously across interstellar distances which is not called "telepathy" but might as well be. Instantaneous interstellar communication is a big idea in Blish (see The Dirac Transmitter), of which the Angels are another example.

In "Kyrie," telepathy is not a wave phenomenon but a resonance. An Aurigean communicates with other human beings not by emitting radio waves but only by speaking through a human telepath who thus functions like a Spiritualist medium.