Many critics have noted in passing the popularity of psi in science fiction (SF), but extended critical comment on this popularity is rare in SF studies. This critical inattention to a central thematic element of SF has led to scholars missing a significant shift over the decades in the way the genre's authors use psi, a shift which, once seen, also brings into view several interesting corollary trends, including a progressive development of the techniques of science-fictional world-building and the steady growth of the genre as resulting in part from its functioning as a displacement of religious concerns.

Most will agree that the existence of psi has not been publicly demonstrated; experimental evidence for psi is sporadic and difficult to evaluate, and the mountains of anecdotal evidence, while sometimes interesting, cannot be said to constitute a public proof. Though a cottage industry exists within academia to study psi, the field itself is at best in what Thomas Kuhn has described as the preparadigmatic natural historical phase in the development of a science, that earliest period of data collection in which competing schools of theory arise to explain the observed phenomena. Of course, when the Neptunists and Vulcanists were having at it in the earliest developmental phase of geology, they had a natural history they could study. In parapsychology, it is not yet clear that the objects of study which are said constitute the field's natural history even exist. Parapsychology is a most interesting, but also a most problematic, "science."

Having noted all this, though, it must be admitted that psi phenomena strike a deep chord in us, judging by their persistence in human narrative, myth and religion, and by the numbers of people believing in them today. James Alcock, surveying science undergraduates at York University in Toronto and McGill University in Montreal, found that 79% of natural science undergraduates and 83% of social science undergraduates expressed at least some belief in such phenomena. Charts 1-5 show the results of my own statistical examination of the frequency of belief in psi in the general adult population of America and among physicists, other scientists, and humanists at American universities. This study also demonstrates high levels of belief in psi in adults and greater belief among younger than among older adults.

But if belief in psi is common in the general population, it is even more so among the readers of science fiction. William Sims Bainbridge has shown that stories of "telepathy" rank second in popularity among SF fans only after those of "alien cultures," and he has found that fans are more likely to believe in psi than the general undergraduate student population. Bainbridge finds that:
 
 

college students provide a reasonable comparison with [SF] fans, sharing with them high levels of education, awareness of cultural trends, and youth...Members of the SF subculture seem more convinced of the reality of ESP, with 37.8% [n=590] saying it "definitely exists," compared with 22.7% [n=1,412] of the Seattle college students.

"Psi stories," writes Peter Nicholls, "remain commonplace in sf, and it would be possible to multiply examples almost indefinitely." However popular, though, few observers of SF have paid much attention to the psi that so pervades the genre. A brief section of Nicholls' The Science in Science Fiction is concerned with the "Powers of the Mind," and Nicholls has contributed several short articles on the subject to The Science Fiction Encyclopedia. The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a creditable overview of the thematic development of psi in SF, and the effect of these encyclopedia articles taken together is to make explicit what anyone who reads science fiction must know at least implicitly -- the astonishing pervasiveness of psi in science fiction.

But there is trend in the thematic development of psi in science fiction that has not yet been examined closely. It is not enough to say, as does Nicholls, that "as the years go by, it becomes more difficult for writers to play plausible variations on the theme [of psi]," thus implying both that the psi story is seen less frequently today and that this is so mostly as a result of thematic exhaustion. Psi stories are still very much in evidence today, but psi is embedded in narratives differently now than it was in the past. And this is less the result of any problematic exhaustion of the psi theme in its earlier embodiments, than it is of a recent progressive development of those assumptions in SF narratives which constitute a compensation for the thwarted spiritual yearnings of many in the industrial societies of the late twentieth century.

Until recently, four types of psi story co-existed in science fiction, three of which have in their assumptions concerning psi paralleled the three most common theoretical understandings of it. The "wild talents" SF psi tale reflects a skeptic's understanding of psi as simple nonsense resulting from infantile, or at best adolescent, power fantasies. This skeptic's approach to psi disallows any attempt at explaining such "powers," and science fictional tales which reflect this understanding make little attempt to do so. Such stories are not common in the SF canon proper, for the science-fictional enterprise and persuasive science-fictional world-building require plausible explanation. But they do exist. Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life," for example, tells of a monstrously sadistic and self-willed child who is able to create monsters, turn people into insects and destroy the world by mental power alone." Wild talents SF psi tales are more commonly found on the fringes of the genre in comic books where, with just the thinnest pseudo-scientific gloss, anything is possible. "Kid Eternity" (1942), as a result of a near-death experience, is able to become discorporeal at will and can "call on any person in mythology or history and enter their body." "Kid Psycho" (1965) is a native of the thirtieth century who was exposed to "biogenic radiation" in the womb and can now fly, levitate objects, create force-fields with his eyes and generate a "psycho-force" with which to drill through time. "Psi-Fire" (1976) is described as having "psionic abilities" with which he can "change his molecular density from steel-like solid to a vaporous mist," and "Microwoman" (1978) is a science professor who has discovered that by pressing her fingertips to her temples and shutting her eyes, she can cause her body to be enveloped in a swirling aura which causes her to shrink, in which state she fights crime. This first type of SF psi story is most clearly characterized, borrowing Suvin's felicitous phrase, by its "Great Pumpkin antics."

A second type of SF psi story, call it the "biological radio" tale, is that in which psi is assumed to be a somatically based talent not too far beyond the understanding of our current sciences. In the past, this was a not uncommon explanation of psi functioning -- Sigmund Freud, for instance, came in later life to believe that telepathy was a natural though haphazard mode of communication that had atrophied in humans with the development of speech. A committed materialist, Freud believed that all mental phenomena, telepathy included, would be found to have their ground in biophysical processes. Examples of this second psi story type in SF would include A.E. van Vogt's SLAN (1940), in which we learn that the golden tendrils with which the mutants send and receive thoughts are "growths from formerly little known formations at the top of the brain, which, obviously, must have been the source of all the vague mental telepathy known to earlier human beings and still practiced by people everywhere." The Lensman series of E.E. "Doc" Smith features Lensman Kimball Kinnison who, having gone to Arisia for "advanced training," "emerged from the ordeal infinitely stronger of mind than any man had ever been before; and possessed of a new sense as well -- the sense of perception, a sense somewhat analogous to sight, but of vastly greater power, depth, and scope, and not dependent upon light." In Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, the mechanism of jaunting is described by "Sir John Kelvin" thus:
 
 

We have established that the teleportive ability is associated with the Nissl bodies, or Tigroid Substance in nerve cells. The Tigroid Substance is easiest demonstrated by Nissl's method using 3.75 g. of methylen blue and 1.75 g. of Venetian soap dissolved in 1,000 cc. of water. Where the Tigroid Substance does not appear, jaunting is impossible. Teleportation is a Tigroid Function.

And in James Blish's Jack of Eagles, Dr. Todd explains to Danny Caiden the probable origins of Caiden's developing psi powers: "Tentatively, we can say that at least one part of your brain which nobody else uses -- even when thinking -- is in continuous operation for you." When Danny observes that "ESP hurts when its working," Dr. Todd is not surprised and declares, "You're opening up new synapses, new impulse-channels from nerve-cell to cell. Many of them have never been used before and...may be in a highly primitive state."

The third type of SF psi story, call it the "metaphysical" SF psi story, coincides with more metaphysical explanations of psi. Attempts to explain psi as either a material or energic phenomenon have been markedly unpersuasive, and over the past thirty years they have been supplanted in parapsychology by various attempts at what amount to metaphysical explanation. Such explanations need not be occult or irrational, though sometimes they are. Philosophically, such an accounting of psi processes would require the widening of our generally accepted notions of causality with the assumption of an ontologically grounded notion of "form." Logically, form arises from the interaction of being and becoming. "Being" is that which underlies all processes and all things which participate in those processes; it is that final unity pointed to in the sciences and religion by their assumption of a single explanatory principle. "Becoming" would include those processes that being underlies, and the partial beings participating in them. Where becoming would entail incessant change and would be both open to investigation and quantification, being would exist beyond the plenum of spacetime, and would thus be always what it is, unchanging, unique and unquantifiable. But being and becoming must be seen as more than logical opposites, for being is the ground of becoming and would lie at the heart of each process and all processes. A relationship between being and becoming must obtain, then.

How would being interact with becoming? It would "radiate" into becoming and acausally organize it, giving rise to "form," that is, qualitative patterns of ontological organization. Only thus can novelty and qualitative variegation in the cosmos be first allowed, and then accounted for. Too, parapsychological phenomena could be understood as acausally "constellated," highly synthetic events grounded in the radical unity of being. Where psi appears in such popular SF stories as those to be cited in this third category of SF psi story, a notion of form grounded in the radical unity of being is always implicit.

For many readers, world-building in the metaphysical SF psi story is more persuasive and satisfying than in the first two types of psi story or in other types of SF more generally. This is the result of a progressive working out of the shared metaphysical assumptions embedded in SF worlds which include psi, and a more consistent working out in those tales of the deeper implications of psi itself. If parapsychologists are someday able to publicly demonstrate the existence of psi, and if it is then shown to have as little relation to time, distance and physical process as they currently believe it to have, it seems likely that a thoroughgoing reworking of current physics predicated upon a radical and possibility transcendent unity of being will be necessitated, a reworking which could ultimately effect the inclusion of mind in the world as more than just an epiphenomenal result of a deterministic evolution. An empirically grounded metaphysical theory of psi could thus lead to the quick development of a "theophanous" science. But the metaphysical SF psi story has for some time now worked with all this as simply given, and in doing so, it has allowed authors to build more satisfying and persuasive SF worlds than would have been possible without such a progressive development of metaphysical ideas in the genre. For the assumptions of the metaphysical SF psi story, that mind is real and grounded in a transcendent unity of being, speak to deep needs in us all, and for most readers a fictional world seems more complete with them than without, whether or not those readers are explicitly aware of their presence. The human species evolved in the context of such assumptions concerning itself and the world, and whatever one believes of their ultimate truth or falsity, thousands of generations of humans and proto-humans bear witness to their psychological reality. These assumptions ring true when used with skill in the fictional portrayal of people and societies. Too, no system is a self-contained whole, and a fictional world of epic proportions without a point of transcendence is counterintuitive, finally less persuasive than one which includes the transcendent. The proportions of very many SF worlds are epic, of course, especially those of the metaphysical SF psi story. The effectiveness of SF world-building in this most popular mode of SF psi story makes it clear that Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness somehow has its correlates in the human heart.

Many in our disenchanted times experience at least temporary religio-mythic satiation when they are drawn into the worlds of the metaphysical SF psi story. These worlds clarify the deepest psychological and mythic processes of our own; in them mind counts for something, arcing out into deep contact with nature and other minds. Prophecy and fate do yield the eschaton, the worth and necessity of human moral effort are affirmed, and readers can live for a time in clear sight of those forces that make the world, forces which, accentuated in the creative process, turn just beneath the surface. Such SF world-building creates for us tales that are among the most fully fleshed in the genre.

Narratival prefigurations of the fully developed metaphysical SF psi story have been with us for many decades now. Late in the last century and early in ours, the romance adventure tale which combined some bit of science with the occult or gnostic was fairly common. Thomas D. Clareson notes many examples in his Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s, among them The Coming Race (1871) by Lord Edward Bulwer Lytton:

In an unspecified country during a trip through a mine [Clareson writes], the unnamed American protagonist gains access to a vast subterranean world inhabited by the Vril-ya, who have dwelt there since the Noachian deluge. They have an advanced technology, including robots and detachable wings so that they can fly; everything is powered by "vril," which Lytton suggests is a kind of "atmospheric magnetism"...Lytton does not object to machines. However, he is more interested in politics, social organization, evolution, world peace, and the occult.

In The Professor's Sister; A Romance (1888), author Julian Hawthorne had "Ralph Merlin" declare that science will enable humankind to do many wonderful things, visits to other planets and communication with the beings there among them. But Clareson notes that the novel is dominated by mysticism, and serves "as a vehicle for various ideas of the period about spirit and matter and the nature of the universe." The Realm of Light (1908), by John Stevens, is a lost world story in which the protagonists from our world discover a people who combine a high technology with great spiritual development and psychic powers. And John Meyer's 20,000 Trails Under the Universe with the Cerebroscope; A Tale of Wonderful Adventures (1917) tells of the "Cerebroscope," a device which allows communication with the dead. The lead character establishes the Church of Universal Truth, and the Cerebroscope effects "the reign of the brotherhood of man."

In SF today there is little of this tentative and sometimes clumsy blending of science and the occult. As modern hypotheses concerning psi have been incorporated into the metaphysical SF psi story, and as the ontological implications of those hypotheses have been more fully articulated in the genre, scant room has been left for the lawless occult. In recent decades, the appeal of such narratives has increased among SF readers, and judging by the Hugos and Nebulas, the metaphysical SF psi story is one of the most popular and innovative modes of SF tale. In it, psi has moved to the background and the tale is not about psi as much as it is about human and natural community in relation to the transcendent. In this, the metaphysical SF psi story is compensatory, our spiritual yearnings driving its development. In times past, it was in relationship with the transcendent that true community, human and natural, was believed to be most perfectly constellated. But unlike the hunter-gatherer societies in which our species evolved, our modern industrial societies have little use for the transcendent, and in them we have little sense of connection with the natural world and only a pallid experience of human community. The metaphysical SF psi story is compensatory. While psi may be in the background of this story type, the presence of psi and the progressive articulation of its ontological implications are essential for the tentative solutions such tales have collectively proposed to the primary existential dilemmas of modern society.

If psi stories are indeed so commonplace in SF that "it would be possible to multiply examples almost indefinitely," the same is nearly as true of the metaphysical SF psi story. The people of Karres, in James H. Schmitz's The Witches of Karres (1949), have developed a sane human community and a theophanous science much in advance of the science of their future day. In them, psi talent is fully manifest. How is all this possible? "Klatha." "Klatha was a metaphysical concept -- a cosmic energy, something not quite of this universe. Some people supposedly could tune in on it, use it for various purposes." Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) considers what was known of psi in its day through the device of Rupert Boyce's library, "one of the world's finest libraries of books on parapsychology and allied subjects." With the arrival of the Overlords on earth, human culture briefly flowers, then falters, as humans are robbed of initiative by the policies and achievements of the technologically advanced aliens. Eventually, however, psi begins to manifest in young children the world over, leading before long to their (but not their parents') transcendent pleromatic union, and the perfection of human community.

In Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Martian mysticism is brought to Earth -- and this mysticism works. Michael Valentine Smith has been raised by Martians to Martian ways of thinking. He and his followers manifest the full range of purported psi talents, eventually gathering in perfected communities of the enlightened called "nests." All things in Stranger in a Strange Land stand in relation to the transcendent. Heinlein has Smith say: "Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok." But what Smith has to teach is not religion, nor is it ever in the metaphysical SF psi tale. "What I had to teach couldn't be taught in schools," Smith declares, "I was forced to smuggle it in as religion -- which it is not..." Religion claims to mediate the Real; but when we already stand in clear sight of the Real in the metaphysical SF psi story, religion is superfluous. Martian life is theophanous and Jubal Harshaw, know-it-all raconteur and Smith's mentor, is startled when he realizes that "it was not possible to separate in the Martian tongue the human concepts: `religion,' `philosophy,' and `science.'"

David Brin's Startide Rising (1983) presents a Byzantine Galactic civilization of the greatest antiquity in which psi figures prominently. The Tymbrimi, humanoids friendly to humans, are telempathic. The novel's contending species use psi bombs, psi shields and psi radiation detectors. The Tandu, a grim arachnoid species, employ Episiarchs, psychic adepts and members of an indentured client race, to produce a risky psi "probability drive" on their battlecruisers:
 
 

Giant cruisers spilled out of a rent in space...There were rules that should have prevented it. The tunnel was an unnatural way to pass from place to place. It took a strong will to deny nature and to call into being such an opening in space. The Episiarch, in its outraged rejection of What Is, had created the passage for its Tandu masters. The opening was held by the adamant power of its ego -- by its refusal to concede anything at all to reality.
 
 

And Earth's dolphins, an "uplifted" species indentured to humankind, still move at times in the mystical Whale Dream. The book's epilog has Creideiki, dolphin captain of the Earth ship Streaker, hearing these words in the rapture of that Dream:
 
 

: Rest : Rest and Listen :

: Rest And Listen And Learn, Creideiki :

: For The Startide Rises :

: In The Currents Of The Dark :

: And We Have Waited Long For What Must Be:
 
 

The beings who inhabit the Whale Dream, who ride "currents of the dark" not guessed at yet by galactic civilization, are clearly intended by Brin to live close to this SF world's transcendent. It will be interesting to see how that transcendent and any sentient or natural community dependent upon it are developed in the sequels to this first novel of a series.

In Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead (1986), sequel to Ender's Game (1985) and second novel in a longer series, we once again meet sentient non-human beings gifted with psi. Ender Wiggin, the novel's protagonist, carries with him the last larval queen of the Buggers, a telepathic hive-mind species destroyed by humanity (and Ender) millenia before. And "ansibles," devices that allow instantaneous communication between the Hundred Worlds of the tale, have given birth to a being who calls herself Jane, and who is known only to Ender:
 
 

Jane herself appeared, or at least the face she had used to appear to Ender ever since she had first revealed herself to him, a shy, frightened child dwelling in the vast memory of the interstellar computer network...The ansible had given birth to her. Even worldwide computer networks operated no faster than lightspeed, and heat limited the amount of memory and speed of operation. But the ansible was instantaneous, and tightly connected with every computer in the world. Jane first found herself between the stars, her thoughts playing among the philotic strands of the ansible net.
 
 

The "trees" into which the ambulatory sentient "Piggies" of the planet Lusitania metamorphose are also telepathic. Of them, Card has the Hive Queen think to Ender:
 
 

The part of our mind that holds our thought, what you call the philotic impulse, the power of the ansibles, it is very cold and hard to find in human beings. But this one, the one we've found here, one of many that we'll find here, his philotic impulse is much stronger, much clearer, easier to find, he hears us more easily, he sees our memories, and we see his...forgive us if we leave the hard work of talking to your mind and go back to him.

In all this are the elements of the metaphysical SF psi tale: an incipient development of a theophanous science that in the ansible implies the ontological reality of mind, "philotic impulse" as the scientific correlate of that one process which underlies diverse manifestations of mind, and a foreshadowing throughout the novel of a true community to be constellated in sequels to it by the Buggers, Piggies, humans and Jane in relationship to that one thing/process. I have noted already fans' ranking of "alien cultures" as the most popular SF theme, with "telepathy" a close second. That alien cultures such as Card's Buggers and Piggies are so very often developed within the model of the metaphysical SF psi story makes even more clear the popularity and importance of the psi story in SF generally, and of the metaphysical SF psi story in particular.

A fourth type of SF psi story is that in which psi is used as an interesting plot device to explore an aspect or aspects of the human condition with little interest in the ontological implications of psi. Because knowledge of psi and belief in it are so widespread, these stories can use it with little or no explanation needed. Examples would include Bester's The Demolished Man, Sturgeon's The Synthetic Man, Silverberg's Dying Inside, and Delany's "Corona."

In 1971, James Blish asserted that:

Most science fiction writers... [who are] responsible to what they consider to be scientific fact...only extend the consequences of our present-day paradigms into the future. There are some, [though], who present futures in which new paradigms obviously prevail. Most of them do this unconsciously, but whenever a writer tosses out reference to working telepathy, or working faster-then-light drive, he is talking about such a future -- and of one thing we may be very sure: the future will offer us new paradigms...In my opinion -- in my profoundly religious opinion, I might add -- it is the duty of the conscientious science fiction writer not to falsify what he believes to be known fact. It is an even more important function for him to suggest new paradigms, by suggesting to the reader...that X, Y, and Z are possible. Every time a story appears with a faster-than-light drive, it expresses somebody's faith -- maybe not the writer's; but certainly many of the readers -- that such a thing may be accomplishable, and someday will be accomplished. Well, we have a lot of hardware...on the moon right now, to show us what can be done with repeated suggestion. I think it can be done philosophically on a far broader scale than we have ever managed to do before.

The "wild talents" SF psi story is rare in serious SF. The "biological radio" SF psi story, so popular in the forties and fifties, is almost never seen now. Today, writers either accept psi as a given to explore the human condition in stories that do not move much beyond an epistemological concern, or more commonly they assume the mode of the "metaphysical" SF psi story. Psi is being domesticated in SF; and in the metaphysical SF psi story its deeper logic is being progressively explored in tale after tale, until today it is no longer the wild and unpredictable creature it once seemed. More a beast of burden now, psi has become so much a commonplace in the genre that many critics have not stopped to consider that a story that is not explicitly about psi can still be a psi story. The biological radio SF psi tales of the past were most often about psi, but the metaphysical SF psi tale of today is concerned with much more than just psi. In it, psi moves to the background and blends with other primary assumptions of those science-fictional worlds -- the ontological reality of mind and of love, for instance -- which are all implicitly grounded in a radical and transcendent unity of being. The continuing development of the metaphysical SF psi story, its great popularity with fans today and its eclipsing of the other categories of SF psi story suggest that many in the SF community have indeed taken up the Blishean task of reshaping our primary philosophical paradigms.
 
 

Notes

. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, Enlarged, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970.

Alcock, James E, Parapsychology: Science or Magic?, Foundation of Philosophy of Science and Technology Series, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981.

I asked respondants to judge the liklihood of the existence of "psychic phenomena." Scientists and physicists from major American research universities were polled by mail. Four degrees of liklihood rather than five were presented to academics to force the choice between possibility and impossibility. I was afraid that thoughtful people would be too ready to credit anything with at least some possibility, and thus I hesitated to compound this tendency by making the choice of "possible" the visual center of a range of five choices.

. See my "The Influence of Speculative Fiction on the Religious Formation of the Young," Extrapolation, Winter, 1987, Vol. 28, No. 4. for a fuller consideration of this point.

. Bainbridge, William Sims, Dimensions of Science Fiction, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 163.

1. Bainbridge, William Sims, Dimensions of Science Fiction, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 163.

. Nicholls, Peter, "Psi Powers," The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979, p. 480.

. Nicholls, Peter, The Science in Science Fiction, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1983.

. Nicholls, Peter, ed., The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979. See "ESP," "Psi Powers," and "Pseudo-science."

. Ash, Brian, ed., The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Harmony

Books, New York, 1977. See section titled "Telepathy, Psionics and

ESP."

. Nicholls, Peter, "Psi Powers," The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979, p. 480.

. Nicholls, Peter, "Psi Powers," The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979, p. 480.

. Rovin, Jeff, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes, Facts on File Publications, Oxford, England, 1985, p. 163.

. Rovin, Jeff, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes, Facts on File Publications, Oxford, England, 1985, p. 164.

. Rovin, Jeff, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes, Facts on File Publications, Oxford, England, 1985, p. 419.

. Rovin, Jeff, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes, Facts on File Publications, Oxford, England, 1985, p. 189.

. Suvin, Darko, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, Yale UP, New Haven, CT, 1979, pps. 24-25.

. van Vogt, A.E., Slan, Nelson Doubleday, Inc., New York, 1968, p. 73.

. Smith, Edward E., The Grey Lensman, Pyramid Publications, New York, 1966, p. 17.

. Bester, Alfred, The Stars My Destination, Bantam Books, New York, 1970, p. 10.

. Blish, James, Jack of Eagles, Avon Books, New York, 1958, p. 57.

. Blish, James, Jack of Eagles, Avon Books, New York, 1958, p. 57.

. "Theophanous," or "God-manifesting." "God" here is a generic signifier for the transcendent.

. Archaeological evidence for religion among Homo sapiens neandertalensis shows religious behavior in human species reaching back 250,000 years, or 12,500 generations. Little remains of the material culture of earlier human species, too little to clearly demonstrate religious behavior, but microanalysis of butchered H. erectus bones recently discovered in Asia have lead some hominid palaeontologists to the tentative (and still controversial) conclusion that at least one group of H. erectus practiced some form of ritual cannibalism. If this interpretation of the evidence is confirmed in future finds, the existence of religious behavior could possibly be demonstrated as long ago as 1,500,000 years, or 75,000 generations.

. Clareson, Thomas D., Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1984, p. 174.

. Clareson, Thomas D., Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1984, p. 137.

. Clareson, Thomas D., Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1984, p. 136.

. Meyer, John Joseph, 20,000 Trails Under the Universe with the Cerebroscope; A Tale of Wonderful Adventures, New York: "Privately Printed," 1917. Quoted in Clareson, Thomas D., Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1984, p. 188.

. Nicholls, Peter, "Psi Powers," The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979, p. 480.

. Schmidtz, James H., The Witches of Karres, Chilton Books, New York, 1960, p. 37.

. Clarke, Arthur C., Childhood's End, Ballantine Books, New York, 1987, p. 102.

. Heinlein, Robert A., Stranger in a Strange Land, Berkley Books, New York, 1984, p. 419.

. Heinlein, Robert A., Stranger in a Strange Land, Berkley Books, New York, 1984, p. 419.

. Heinlein, Robert A., Stranger in a Strange Land, Berkley Books, New York, 1984, p. 137.

. Brin, David, Startide Rising, Bantam Books, New York, 1983, p. 18.

. Brin, David, Startide Rising, Bantam Books, New York, 1983, p. 460.

. Card, Orson Scott, Speaker for the Dead, Tom Doherty Associates, New York, 1986, p. 66.

. Card, Orson Scott, Speaker for the Dead, Tom Doherty Associates, New York, 1986, p. 105.

. Card's choice of "philotic impulse" ("philotic" meaning "of or pertaining to love") as the technical term referring to the functional ground of both ansible and mind is itself indicative of that deeper unity, for love is the most profoundly unitive state in human experience.

. Blish, James, The Tale that Wags the God, Advent:Publishers, Inc., Chicago, 1987, p. 44-45.

. Another sign of this "continuing development" is that authors themselves seem less embarrassed today about fulfilling in the metaphysical SF psi story this "duty" that Blish would lay upon them. Where Clarke feels he must note on the frontispiece of Childhood's End that "the opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author," and Heinlein was often writing tongue-in-cheek in Stranger in a Strange Land, Brin and Card give us tales that, while they may be all in good fun, are also not embarrassed about seeming to take taking seriously the ideas they present.