Show #17 will cover Alfred Bester's SF classic, The Demolished Man, a novel that was also the first winner of the Hugo Award for Best SF Novel in 1953.
Plan on being able to listen to that show the week of August 7th.
Link: Hugo Awards (Worldcon)
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Reading "More Than Human" and this, as well as looking over some other early science fiction (such as "The Humanoids" by Jack Williamson and "Who Goes There" by John Campbell), I've noticed that in the 50s there seemed to be a real belief that physic powers were about to explode and be a part of regular life.
At the time, some research (later debunked) seemed to prove the existance of psychic powers, and science fiction writers were making it a common feature. John Campbell was insisting on writers using it (he pushed Jack Williamson to make psychic powers the way humans would defeat robots in The Humanoids, for example).
It would be interesting to discuss what has happened to this expectation. Have science fiction writers more or less given up on this expectation, or has it mutated to technology or what?
I don't think that psychic and paranormal abilities are falling out of favor with writers of scifi. They've just taken their stories to television where they can make more money for them
Seriously, with so much of our brains' capacity untapped and misunderstood, who wouldn't want to believe that we're just a hair's breadth away from some sort of shift that allows a significant portion of the population to begin to do things differently?
I think the tech wave was bigger in the 90s than it is now, having waned when everyone seemed to suffer from a tech hangover for a while. I don't think anyone knows what the next big trend will be until it hits, but the novel I'm working on contains magic and psychic abilities together, so of course I don't think it's played out
Yay! My copy of _The Demolished Man_ arrived today. The question is, will I have time to read it before the KAMN show goes live....
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/9903/ten-percent-myth.html
The adage that we only use 10% of brains is a myth it seems.
Anyway, my copy of `The Demolished Man' was in an anthology of scifi books (2001, Day of the Triffids and I Robot). It was my first encounter with a book whose plot shows viewpoints of both the hero and villian, great stuff.
First, I never specifically used the "10%" theory, so your misunderstanding about what I meant when I said that so much of our brain's capacity is untapped and it's capabilities misunderstood is understandable.
That said, I must respectfully disagree with the debunkers at those URLs because their definitions are unrelated to my opinion on the matter.
I don't believe that there are areas of the brain that aren't being utilized... that's rather nonsensical. Where our shortcomings lie is in the fact that we generally are unable to consciously perceive, control or be fully aware of the extraneous data processing going on in our brains outside the generally accepted realities.
Now, how many scientific discoveries were made because the researcher believed in something that everyone else told them wasn't possible? The impossible became probable, then possible, then scientific "fact" with enough research and publishable results.
Or was what really happened that one person's differing perception became the norm, eventually, with everyone else changing their perceptions to accept what they had previously believed to be impossible?
I'm probably being way broad with that definition of my opinion, but just like I believe we don't fully understand those scientifically undefined behaviors of space and the universe, I don't believe we've figured out the brain and it's ability to perceive reality and we have a long way to go before we do figure it out.
Studies on cognitive adaptability, visual processing and perception have been performed since before my parents were born, and questions about why some people process and comprehend information differently than others basically shine a glaring light onthe fact that we don't fully understand how our brains work.
Do I think there's a one-hit solution to giving everyone "4400" abilities? No. Do I believe that there's far far more to the brain than is currently in our medical and scientific journals, mostly about how we can access, process and apply the information it's processing but we're not consciously using or perceiving? Yes.
You're finding agreement here, Summer. Science has a lot to learn about HOW the brain works, let alone figuring out WHAT ELSE it could be capable of. I read Demolished man two years ago, and it's a wonderful book, even when it dates itself, it just makes you appreciate the difference in eras, and goggle at how good the story is despite being so old. I can't wait to hear you guys' takes on it.
Well, I'm about half way through the book, so no spoilers please.
So far I find the Espers Guild fascinating. The folks who wrote Babylon 5 must have been influenced by this book when they created the Psi Core. A lot of the ideas are the same, or very similar; the psychic rating system, requirement to marry other espers, the way the psychics relate to each other telepathically, their insular community outside that of "normals", bigotry and mistrust from said "normals", etc.
The decadent aristocrats are prescient. I don't know how shocking the party held by the "Gilt Corpse" was in the 1950's, but it seems perfectly plausible today. You can almost see Paris Hilton turning up at that party.
I would add that even if something is impossible it doesn't stop you putting it in a story. Even if psi powers are utter tosh, doesn't mean you can't portray a world where psi powers are real.
I'm a big, big, big, fan of the Demolished Man. Indeed Michael, the influence on Babylon 5 and the Psi Corp is ABSOLUTELY huge. How can it be anything else given the name Alfred Bester being attached to both!
I loved the experimental writing in The Demolished Man (which is sadly less obvious in the audiobook), the one character is named "Atkins" but it's spelled "@kins". More, the mantra...
"Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun."
is extremely memorable. The meme behind it is amazing. We don't have psychics, the whole idea of them is PURE fantasy and yet this novel treats it like hard SF, which I think is why this novel works so well.
Even better, the plot UTTERLY compelling, how do you commit a murder in a society full of psychics?!
Perhaps best of all is the main character, Ben Reich. He's cruel, whip smart, and oh so wonderfully evil. I love him.
Jesse
Jesse,
Of course part of the moral complexity is that Ben Reich isn't completely unsympathetic. Even the protagonist, Lincoln Powell, likes and respects Reich at a certain level.
At the end of the novel, when "demolition" is performed on Reich (spoiler alert), Powell ruefully comments that in the old days Reich would have been executed. The idea here is that people like Reich are too valuable to society to simply be discarded. Despite their crimes, individuals such as Reich have a dynamism that outwieghts their anti-social tendencies.