Psionics involve the use of the mind to alter or command reality, typically through some understanding of a deeper truth about the universe or command over a fundamental law of reality.
It’s pretty cool, but I have trouble thinking of media where it takes a prominent role. The few examples that come to mind are:
Star Wars - The Force Mass Effect - Biotics/Element Zero technology Stellaris - Spiritualist Ethos Warhammer 40k - Psykers/Orks
What are some other examples of psionics in Sci-Fi?
The sci-fi book series “Perry Rhodan” features a lot of humans and other beings with all kind psionic powers.
Telepathy, telekinesis, invisibility, teleportation, fire, ice, atomic restructuring, the list is really really long.
Perry Rhodan
Just be prepared to catch up. They have been publishing weekly novellas since 1961, so they are well over 3,000 issues.
Oh, and if you want to go past the first 140 or so, you will need to learn German!
If you speak/read Portuguese, French, Japanese, Dutch or Czech, you can read a lot further than in English. But yeah, original language is German.
I prefer to read the Silberbände over the novellas tho.
Star trek! Vulcan mind melds (not to mention betazoids and other telepaths) are absolutely psychic
Firestarter
trouble instigator
T-wisted Drew Barrymore.
Check out Babylon 5, telepaths are a major part of the story for so many reasons.
The creator of Babylon 5 has recently begun uploading every episode of the show to YouTube to watch for free, they release a new ep every 3 days
For anyone who wants to give it a try, here’s the season 1 playlist: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGTv90eS-e4I
Looks region locked :(. All are hidden.
Unfortunately it is :/
If you have a VPN and use a US server you may be able to get around it (maybe Mozilla’s free VPN in Firefox would do the trick?)
Otherwise, there’s always yarr 🏴☠️ :)
Surprised no one has mentioned Stranger Things.
The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man both have this in some way, perhaps explaining the presence of Mr Bester in Babylon 5.
Philip K Dick has recurring themes of pre-cogs and telekinetics.
X-Men is extremely heavy on telepaths, and has quite a few telekines and other variants.
dune, foundation, starship troopers, stranger in a strange land, martian chronicles, its fairly common in a lot of classic scifi as some sort of evolution things that happens. even 2001. Sometimes its hard to identify if there are psychic abilities or technology that is allowing for the abilities.
Star Gate?
Currently rewatching SG1.
While it exists in the universe, I wouldn’t really call it popular. It’s basically just a small plot point in a handful of episodes, unless I forgot something
Peter F. Hamilton’s Greg Mandel trilogy - the titular character is a former psi-soldier turned mercenary. IIRC, candidate psi-soldiers are given a brain implant that squirts out psi juice on demand, and each soldier develops unique and unpredictable powers. Greg’s was the ability to sense, control, or kill other nearby minds.
oh forgot babylon5. its a major part of the world.
Two video games got me kinda obsessed with psionics as a younger person:
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. It’s a near-future military thriller where the main character has amnesia, but finds himself with telekinesis, pyrokinesis, remote viewing, mind control, and “mind drain” to power those abilities. That game was amazingly cool and had a banger single called “With My Mind” by Cold (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZQk3ig-i_s)
It’s been a long time, but our guy basically battles a rogue paramilitary bad guy faction that’s like “If MK ULTRA actually worked on a few dudes and they were super fascist.”
Second Sight: Still gotta play this one! Kinda like Bourne Identity. Guy wakes up in a strange facility with psychokinetic powers and amnesia, and strange government people are trying to kill him. He can throw things around with his mind.
(I feel like these were the same game pitched to two different publishers hahaha)
Hehe I remember really trying to exercise my mind to put out matches or move objects. Was quite disappointed. :p
Chronicle: This one is an interesting movie. Kinda a found footage superhero film. Three friends touch a weird rock and end up with telekinesis. Things kinda derail out of control from there. Excellent effects.
(Somebody already mentioned “Push” which is also super cool.)
I don’t know about popular, but one of my favorite examples is Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. It’s an old game (1999) but I’ll put the psionic stuff in a spoiler tag because, If you like Civilization type games and want a good story, I think it’s worth going in blind and experiencing the story as it was intended.
SMAC plot spoilers
The game takes place on a planet around Alpha Centauri, generally referred to in-game as Planet. Just before the colony ship gets to Planet, disaster strikes, communications with Earth are lost, and the crew breaks into seven factions, one for each drop pod on the ship. The planet is dominated by a fungus that hosts a number of hostile native species, and these species use psionic attacks to paralyze their victims with horror before killing them.
As the player develops their civilization and discovers new techs, they learn that the alien animals are psionically linked to the fungus, which itself forms a Planet-spanning neural network. Over the course of the game, Planet begins to develop conscious thought and communicate with the humans, first through psionic dreams, later through specially constructed interfaces between the fungus and human tech.
I distinctly remember having my mind blown as the story unfolded. It’s been many years since I’ve thought about it; gonna have to dig it up and see if it’s as good as I remember it :)
Lots of psychics in Star Trek. Vulcans, Betazoids, and Ocampa for instance.
I feel like there are some in The Culture series but its been a minute since I read them and I only got a few books in.Dune has a lot of kinda-psychics. Paul and pretty much all the Atreides after him would count i think.
There are some in the Foundation series I believe
Starship Troopers had Neal Patrick Harris read a bug’s mind
Just about anything that’s not especially “hard” sci-fi tends to have psychics of one sort or another. I dont remember any psychics in The Expanse or BattleTech but my knowledge of both is rather limited edit BattleTech no, The Expanse yes from a cursory search
Also how was OP’s 40k xeno example orks and not Eldar ;D orks are way cooler and more fun i agree tho
ocampas seems to have the more advanced one, especially with thier telekinesis(advanced telekinesis), and her telepathy was used to battle another telepathic alien early in the series(Kes). the sleeping telepaths(likely extended range using technology) that invades peoples minds.
I feel like there are some in The Culture series
The ship Grey Area uses technology to read flesh minds while investigating war crimes. The other Minds consider that an abuse of power and call it the ‘Meatfucker’ behind its back. I don’t recall any other (pseudo-) psychic phemonema.
There is one human character that has accurate “hunches” about the future in the first book. That’s dropped in the next books though.
Thanks! Yeah the more i think about it the more i doubt reading about psychics, which i imagine had to be deliberate seeing as humans had developed absolutely insane levels of control over their bodies (sex changes, producing drugs, etc just by deciding to)
WandaVision: She creates a new reality around herself.
Fringe: One of the main plot points are psychics controlling reality.
Push: A movie about a psychic people that can push thoughts into other people’s heads.
Legion: Mind bendy reality show where the main character can control reality.
Push is a great movie! This is the first time I’ve seen it mentioned and it deserves more recognition. It combines suspense, action, character development, and cultural impact, backed by a good script and excellent acting.
I haven’t watched it in a really long time, but it stuck with me when it came out. I’m a sucker for creative names for existing concepts. It was the first time I had head of “pushing” a psychic term.
Overall it was a surprisingly original take on psionics. I particularly liked the way they handled Watchers. They didn’t so much predict the future as see the detailed consequences of their actions. The one woman breaking out of the secure facility by rolling a ball bearing along the floor was both neat and kind of terrifying.
I have also come to the conclusion that Chris Evans is worth watching in anything. He was an incredible Captain America, but I have now seen enough of his other movies to appreciate just how much he brings to every role. Not all of his movies are good, but he is always good in them. And he has mostly picked good movies.
Yeah, Push was his first one I saw him after Johnny Storm, then he had Scott Pilgrim and Snow Piercer. So he had a good few cult classics.
i dont think wanda, counts she using reality warping with chaos magic, she does use telepathy with her magic is different.
The Protoss from StarCraft.
Uh, also the Terrans to a limited degree.
