You read my mind!

[stevekenson]

For some reason, I'm on a psionics kick in fiction, perhaps due to picking up Project Farcry by Pauline Ashwell while in Vermont a while back. So now I'm hunting for other good books with telepathic characters, particularly protagonists and, well, let's say amazon.com isn't a lot of help so far. Here's a quick (and possibly incomplete) overview of stuff I'm already familiar with:

Pretty much anything by: Katherine Kurtz, Mercedes Lackey, or Joan Vinge.
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
The Uplift series by David Brin
The Humanx Commonwealth series by Alan Dean Foster
The Dune series by Frank Herbert
The People stories by Zenna Henderson
The Hiero books by Sterling Lanier
The Callahan stories by Spider Robinson
The Psi Corps books for Babylon 5

So, any good "telepath" fiction out there not on the list I should check out?

Comments

[patricks.livejournal.com]

The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons is a good story of a telepath who can't turn his powers off, though I found it pretty bleak & depressing.

[amanofhats.livejournal.com]

Minority Report by Philip K. Dick has telepaths as ancillary characters.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

How does the story compare to the film?

[amanofhats.livejournal.com]

I read the book around the time the film came out so my recollection is a little hazy. I enjoyed both but the film expanded greatly on the story, if I remember correctly, in that the telepaths played a larger role in the film. The book, again if I'm remembering this correctly, focused a lot more on Anderton and his elite detectivatin' skills.

But that's simply content comparison. In my opinion, the film told a better story but the book has its charm.

[amanofhats.livejournal.com]

Oh, and since it's kinda rude to just friend someone and then start commenting on his journal, this is Jason Blair.

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

What about McCaffrey???

Come on, the Rowan series is crucial! You HAVE to read that!

Start with To Ride Pegasus, I think that's the first one.

Love ya!

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's this semi-interesting series called Psi-Man, by Peter David... it's not the best thing in the world, and it's little more than a novelty series, but it has some really good points!

Have fun!

[xomec.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big Peter David fan; I can only handle his writing style in small doses, long term, his tone gets on my nerves.

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

yeah, they bugged me too... I'm not sure why. But then, the books are short, and they still didn't do very well... So maybe they weren't short enough...

[apollonmk.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That was going to be my contribution. I *loved* To Ride Pegasus. And there's a telepathic slant to all of her Dragon novels.

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

*grins and winks*

Anytime! I love Anne McCaffrey!

[eynowd.livejournal.com]

While not strictly about telepaths (although telepathy does play a part), there's always Julian May's Saga of the Exiles, Intervention and the Galactic Milieu series.

[wisepiscean.livejournal.com]

Emeral Eyes and The Long Run are a two book series by Daniel keys Moran. The telepathic characters featuremore prominently in Emerald Eyes, but they are also key to the story of The Long Run. It's set in a very Shadowrun-sans-demihumans near future that's very fun.

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

Christopher Stasheff! He's a little Catholic-friendly, but the Warlock series is excellent!

[hedgehog39.livejournal.com]

Primary Inversion (and by extension, the Skolian series) by Catherine Asaro
More empathy than outright telepathy, but a good social speculation on the integration of psi and tech.
Also really cool FTL physics explanations.

[apollonmk.livejournal.com]

It just hit me: other classics include the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and probably others by her.

There's also the Chronicles of Torner series (Watchtower, Dancers of Arun, something else) though the reviewers on Amazon didn't like it at all. Maybe it was just that I was young... But I did love the idea of the dance that they did. And their "magic" was more like telepathy. Also, this was a story with gay content.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

There's also the Chronicles of Torner series (Watchtower, Dancers of Arun, something else)

I actually read Dancers of Arun way back in high school (when I worked at the town library). It was a minor influence on the stuff I did for Blue Rose (http://www.bluerose.greenronin.com).

[foxbat.livejournal.com]

Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin is good.

Also, check out the Telzey Amberdon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671578510/qid=1140659824/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-3595986-4320946?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) series by James Schmitz. It's fun stuff.