im trying to go to sleep but i cannotttttt stop thinking about this and laughing
Listen, we have to keep this thing circulating on the internet for at least another two decades, because I have to believe that one day that little girl will be grown enough to stumble upon it and She Will Explain
I love that psychic powers are still “allowed” in science fiction. They’re an acceptable part of the aesthetic. Like you can’t have magic, but you can have brain magic, because it’s more Science.
At the time when a lot of classic scifi was written, the pseudo-scientific, academic veneer surrounding psychics had yet to be tarnished. There were university-backed research labs conducting “research” into psychic phenomena. The military and CIA were actively investigating how psychic powers could be used to fight the commies. The CIA even circulated an internal memo condemning James Randi’s efforts at debunking psychics and accusing him of “gross distortions”. Of course, it was all bullshit, but to scifi writers of the 50s, 60s and 70s, “in the future, scientists will discover psychic powers” seemed like as plausible a hypothesis as, like, faster-than-light space travel. And as a result, psychic powers have been grandfathered in to more recent scifi.
