Dude, who even knows.

12th May 2023

Post reblogged from youzicha with 148 notes

youzicha:

raginrayguns:

it’s weird how much “science fiction” involves ESP or other “psychic” abilities. I feel like there’s just this like 20th century woo mindset that accepted psychic powers, potentially old fashioned superstitions like poltergeists considered as psychic phenomena, as well as alien encounters. And you get some sci fi from that (especially let’s say AA Attanasio), but also that’s definitely where Stephen King is coming from so you can have aliens as well as vampires as threats to small towns in Maine.

Apparently a lot of this is due to a single guy! John W. Campbell, Jr. became a big believer and promoter of parapsychology/“psionics”, so in the 1950s lots of science-fiction authors used it as a story premise to increase their chances of getting published in Astounding, and this solidified the concept as an SF trope…

Tagged: pulp fiction

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  7. bwv131 said: As for sources of this, read Asimov’s criticisms of ASF
  8. bwv131 said: This was actually pushed and mostly an artificial craze, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction simply preferred stories of this genre and told his writers to incorporate it, would reject stories that didn’t include it, told them to come back with ESP, etc. So many of the iconic niches of those days all trace back to individual magazines, their editors, and the writers who often embodied a particular magazine of that era.
  9. rendakuenthusiast reblogged this from skluug and added:
    I read a science fiction short story once that featured humans encountering some aliens who had the ability to generate...
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  16. raginrayguns posted this
    it's weird how much "science fiction" involves ESP or other "psychic" abilities. I feel like there's just this like 20th...