In Poul Anderson's Technic History, a telepath detects not subvocalizations but radiation emitted by brain activities. He must understand not the language spoken by the thinker but the code used by the thinker's brain. If the thinker is of a non-telepathic species, then his code is unique to him and the telepath must learn each such code separately before he can interpret thoughts and even then detects only surface thoughts. Aycharaych uniquely does not need time to learn any codes but reads the surface thoughts of any being of any species immediately.
James Blish specialized in presenting alternative rationales for ESP just as Anderson did for FTL.
Addendum: There is microcosmic telepathy, then a telepathic interstellar empire, in Blish's Haertel History (see here).
2 comments:
His species was probably originally the 'conventional' type of telepath, then had this extra capacity (probably some sort of subconscious code-breaker) engineered into them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ad you've also suggested the Chereionites, over many thousands of years, used genetic engineering to enhance this subconscious, nearly instantaneous code cracking ability.
Ad astra! Sean
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