ESP

   An acronym (for extra-sensory perception) popularized by the pioneering exercise in parapsychology Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) by J.B. Rhine (1895-1980), which attempted to repackage folkloristic notions of "second sight" or a "sixth sense" in scientific jargon. Definitions of the term "ESP" vary, but it may be taken to include clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition; many modern sf stories deal also with a restricted kind of telepathy, empathy, in which only feelings and not thoughts may be perceived. Stories about new senses and eccentric augmentations of existing ones are covered in the article on PERCEPTION. Rhine's investigations of ESP eventually broadened out to take in a fuller spectrum of wild talents; for stories about psychokinesis, teleportation and mental fire-raising PSI POWERS.The late 19th century saw a boom in occult romances featuring various kinds of extra-sensory perceptions; attempts by the Society for Psychical Research and other bodies to account for such phenomena in scientific terms helped bring many such romances close to the sf borderline, and encouraged more thoughtful consideration of the implications of possessing these powers. A Seventh Child (1894) by "John Strange Winter" (Henrietta Stannard 1856-1911), Kark Grier: The Strange Story of a Man with a Sixth Sense (1906) by Louis TRACY and The Sixth Sense (1915) by Stephen McKenna (1885-1967) are trivial, but they helped pave the way for Muriel JAEGER's The Man with Six Senses (1927), the first attempt to extrapolate such a hypothesis carefully and painstakingly - and to conclude that it might better be reckoned a curse than a blessing. Some early pulp-sf stories were also cautionary tales, including Edmond HAMILTON's "The Man who Saw the Future" (1930) and "The Man with X-Ray Eyes" (1933).The notion that new powers of ESP might be developed in the course of humankind's future EVOLUTION, although treated sceptically by H.G. WELLS, was developed by several of the UK writers he influenced, including J.D. BERESFORD in The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911) and Olaf STAPLEDON in LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930). It also became a standard theme in GENRE SF, where in the late 1930s Rhine's work began to attract interest along with that of Charles FORT, whose Wild Talents (1932) had dealt extensively with ESP. ESP quickly became part of the standard repertoire of the pulp SUPERMAN, much encouraged by A.E. VAN VOGT's SLAN (1940 ASF; 1946), in which a new race of telepaths struggles against the prejudices of ordinary mortals - a theme further explored in such later novels as Henry KUTTNER's MUTANT (1945-52 ASF; fixup 1953) and George O. SMITH's Highways in Hiding (1956). John W. CAMPBELL Jr, the editor of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, was eventually to become a fervent admirer of Rhine, and ESP stories featured very prominently in the post-war "psi-boom" which he engineered. Important products of this boom included James BLISH's Jack of Eagles (1952; vt ESP-er 1958), Wilson TUCKER's Wild Talent (1954) and Frank M. ROBINSON's The Power (1956). The variant title of the first-named is a significant use of the term ESPER (found also in Lloyd BIGGLE Jr's The Angry Espers, 1961 dos), which had first been popularized in THE DEMOLISHED MAN (1953) by Alfred BESTER, a bold pioneering attempt to depict a society into which espers are fully integrated. Because the psi-boom years coincided with the early years of the Cold War, Campbell's writers paid a good deal of attention to the utility of telepathy in espionage - a frequent theme in the solo and collaborative works of Randall GARRETT. Telepaths still occasionally find such employment in such works as Stephen GOLDIN's Mindflight (1978), Daniel Keys MORAN's Emerald Eyes (1988) and especially the Sensitives series by Herbert Burkholz (1932-) - The Sensitives (1987) and Strange Bedfellows (1988) - but probably do more socially useful work as psychotherapists, like those in John BRUNNER's THE WHOLE MAN (1958-9 Science Fantasy; fixup 1964; vt Telepathist UK) and Roger ZELAZNY's THE DREAM MASTER (1966). ESP is sometimes invoked as a solution to the problem of COMMUNICATION with ALIENS, although the logic of this is somewhat suspect (thought is largely couched in language); one of the more intelligent exercises in this vein is Edward LLEWELLYN's Word-Bringer (1986).Sf writers, ever on the side of progress, usually side with ESP-powered supermen against those who hate and fear them. Theodore STURGEON's work includes many stories in which an ESP-based psychological community is seen as a possible and highly desirable solution to ordinary human alienation; examples include The Dreaming Jewels (1950; vt The Synthetic Man), MORE THAN HUMAN (fixup 1953) and ". . . And My Fear is Great" (1953). Other genre-sf writers who showed a consistently thoughtful and positive interest in ESP-talented characters while the psi-boom gradually lost its impetus included Zenna HENDERSON, in the long-running People series collected in Pilgrimage (coll of linked stories 1961) and The People: No Different Flesh (coll of linked stories 1966), James H. SCHMITZ, in the Telzey Amberdon series and Agent of Vega (coll 1960), Arthur SELLINGS, most notably in Telepath (1962) and The Uncensored Man (1964), Frank HERBERT, especially in the series begun with DUNE (1965), Marion Zimmer BRADLEY in the Darkover series, and Dan MORGAN in the trilogy begun with The New Minds (1967).In Sturgeon's stories ESP often compensates for other inadequacies - a common theme strikingly displayed in such stories as Gene WOLFE's "The Eyeflash Miracles" (1976) and John VARLEY's "The Persistence of Vision" (1978). In more extreme Sturgeon stories, particularly MORE THAN HUMAN and The Cosmic Rape (1958), the acquisition of telepathic powers becomes a kind of transcendental breakthrough. Similarly transcendental ideas of psionic "cosmic community" cropped up occasionally in the work of Clifford D. SIMAK, notably in Time is the Simplest Thing (1961). Not all sf stories, however, place ESP in a positive light. The kind of telepathic "gestalt-mind" featured in MORE THAN HUMAN is given more sceptical treatment in The Inner Wheel (1970) by Keith ROBERTS. The possible embarrassments of telepathy are pointed out in Walter M. MILLER's "Command Performance" (1952; vt "Anybody Else Like Me?"). Such novels as Andra MAUROIS's La machine a lire les pensees (1937; trans as The Thought-Reading Machine 1938 UK) suggest that ESP abilities might be utterly insignificant (though the Emotional Registers in the latter book are purely mechanical devices), but other stories tend to an opposite extreme; even Sturgeon, in his empath story "Need" (1961), recognized that an ability to sense other people's pain might constitute an appalling burden. Numerous tales, notably Lester DEL REY's Pstalemate (1971) and Jack DANN's THE MAN WHO MELTED (1984), propose that people endowed with ESP might very readily become insane, and the well adjusted esper generally has to be credited with an ability to screen out unwanted images, thoughts and feelings lest he or she should lose his or her true self, as the hero of Roger ZELAZNY's Bridge of Ashes (1976) routinely does. Unfortunate consequences of ESP endowment are elaborately described in such novels as Joanna RUSS's AND CHAOS DIED (1970), Mike DOLINSKY's Mind One (1972), Robert SILVERBERG's Dying Inside (1972) and Leigh KENNEDY's The Journal of Nicholas the American (1986). Partly as a result of these sceptical analyses, the idea that ESP might play a crucial role in future human evolution has lost much of its fashionableness, although it is a subsidiary element in Storm CONSTANTINE's not-altogether-earnest Wraeththu trilogy (1987-9).Sf stories which isolate some aspect of ESP for specific consideration usually deal (as do most of the above examples) with telepathy, but there is also a notable tradition of stories dealing specifically with precognition, and with the apparent paradoxes which arise from having knowledge of the future. Characters whose foresight of the future is perversely impotent extend from the hero of J.D. Beresford's "Young Strickland's Career" (1921) to the heroine of C.J. CHERRYH's aptly titled "Cassandra" (1978); and Philip K. DICK's "precogs", including the one in The World Jones Made (1956), rarely get much joy out of their abilities. Brian M. STABLEFORD's "The Oedipus Effect" (1991) borrows Karl Popper's term for the effects which predictions have on the outcome of situations in order to examine the paradoxicality of precognitive talents. Robert Silverberg's The Stochastic Man (1975) considers precognition in much the same sceptical way that his Dying Inside had examined telepathy. Precognition of a patchy and teasingly perverse kind is a common element in thrillers on the sf borderline; a notable example is Stephen KING's The Dead Zone (1979).Despite the inconsistency displayed by supposedly talented subjects and the fact that several of his best performers were ultimately exposed as frauds, Rhine's intellectual descendants have managed to cling to sufficient credibility to support the production of numerous thrillers which deploy ESP without admitting to being sf; examples include Mind out of Time (1958) by Angela TONKS and The Mind Readers (1965) by Margery Allingham (1904-1966), though the latter uses a mechanical device for mind-reading rather than ESP proper. Parapsychological research labs are a common setting for stories on this borderline. Lifestyle fantasists who pass themselves off as clairvoyants or "psychics" are sometimes avid to help the police solve crimes; their negligible success rate is, of course, much improved by their fictional counterparts. Barry N. MALZBERG's and Bill PRONZINI's Night Screams (1979) is an ironic reflection of the phenomenon, which remains a popular theme in the CINEMA and TELEVISION.Two theme anthologies are 14 Great Tales of ESP (anth 1969) ed Idella Purnell Stone and Frontiers II: The New Mind (anth 1973) ed Roger ELWOOD.

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