Telepathy or Hallucination?

Hallucination

I've previously mentioned Isaac Asimov's story Nemesis. In that 1989 novel, Asimov depicted an alien life form of planet (moon) Erythro as having telepathic abilities. That alien life form was a "group mind" composed of widely distributed cells and lacking anything recognizable as a multicellular "body". Luckily, one girl with telepathic abilities is among the first colonists to reach Erythro from Earth, so the microscopic telepathic aliens are recognized.

In 1985, Asimov published a story called "Hallucination" which seems like an early version of the First Contact with telepathic aliens story that was later expanded to novel length in Nemesis. I read "Hallucination" as re-published in Gold. "Hallucination" has the advantage of being much shorter than Nemesis, so if you are in the market for an Asimov story about a telepathic "group mind" then "Hallucination" might be a good place to start.

neutron star

Asimov claimed that he did not like to dumb down stories that were written for children, but it seems like "Hallucination" may have been simplified for length constraints. The story was published over three successive issues of Boys' Life magazine. The idea of "gravitational engineering" is in the story but what it might entail is not explained by Asimov. The story's central plot element of building a base on "Energy Planet" (as part of an attempt to obtain energy from a neutron star) makes no sense to me, but it quickly (hand wave) launches Asimov's story in an exotic Sci Fi locale.

In the story, when a young (15 years old Sam) amazingly achieves telepathic contact with an alien life form on "Energy Planet", rather than celebrate the fantastic discovery, all the adults in the story instead harass Sam and tell him that he is hallucinating. Almost immediately upon taking up residence on Energy Planet, Sam is called a troublemaker and told that the "authorities" have been spying on him. 

inside the dome on Energy Planet

Sam is endlessly told by the "adults" in the story that he was hallucinating, not communicating with an alien, and that he will be quickly sent back to Earth, even-though he wants to stay on Energy Planet. Sam must argue and beg in order to overcome the vast stupidity of every adult in the story. I suppose this "creates dramatic tension" in the story, but it makes no sense. Besides Sam, the other star of the story is "Central Computer". It was Central Computer who inexplicably assigned Sam to duty on Energy Planet. Even Sam does not know what he is supposed to be doing on Energy Planet, but he goes along with the dictates of Central Computer. As Sam puts it, he "had faith in the Central Computer". Readers can assume that the Central Computer knew that Sam was the optimal person to send to Energy Planet to make contact with the aliens.

image source

Asimov also published other stories about telepathic aliens such as the 1950 story "Misbegotten Missionary". I've previously complained about Asimov's telepathic "energy beings" in his 1955 story "The Portable Star". Like Asimov's 1983 story "Potential", "Hallucination" included the idea of a human-designed artificial intelligence (computer) providing assistance to humans as they begin to develop telepathic abilities. 

It seems like Asimov had a fascination with telepathy and was struggling to find the optimal fictional expression of that interest right up to the end of his life. Asimov is most famous for his telepathic robot Daneel who assisted the development of human telepathy among the Second Foundationers. However, there were no aliens in Asimov's Foundation Saga.

interior art by Paul Orban

It is easy for me to view both "Hallucination" and Nemesis as vastly more optimistic First Contact stories and alternatives to Lem's Solaris. I've long wondered if Asimov was inspired by Solaris when he wrote Nemesis. Lem seemed to bask in the idea of telepathic aliens who were too strange for humans to understand. In his fiction, Asimov was usually more likely to show how humans could successfully make telepathic contact with strange aliens and come to understand them. In "Hallucination" the aliens are small insectoids, but they can telepathically link into a group mind that is intelligent.

Explore Strange New Telepaths. Another Asimov story about telepathic aliens from 1956 is "Each an Explorer". I recently complained about a 1953 story called "The Infinites" by Philip K. Dick. Dick began with the futuristic depiction of explorers from Earth who were trying to "map and prospect every bit of rock in the galaxy". In Dick's story, his explorers stumble upon an amazing discovery, but in the end that great discovery is discarded.

the more we think about it,
the more it falls apart

 Plant People. In "Each an Explorer", Asimov depicts a future when two explorers from Earth were visiting a globular star cluster in order to map it and one of them (Smith) seems to have no idea what he is accomplishing by chasing around the galaxy: "I wonder what they do with all this data back on Earth." The other team member, Chouns, is thinking in terms of the next million years and how Earthlings will slowly spread out from Earth to settle to the available worlds of the Galaxy.

Houston, we have an alien. Then, while in the middle of their routine work of mapping the cluster, the spaceship of Smith and Chouns suffers a mysterious failure of the good old hyperatomic motors. Lucky for Smith and Chouns they are close to an Earth-like planet with atmospheric oxygen and plant life that uses chlorophyll; they can land on the planet and try to repair their defective hyperatomic motors. Once on the planet, Smith and Chouns seem to have made an amazing discovery: a form of animal life living in a village. This appears to be the most advanced form of alien life yet found in the Galaxy by explorers from Earth.

cover art by Ed Emshwiller

 Alien Invasion. At the end of the story, we learn that one of the plant species from the cluster can telepathically control animals, turning them into their "slaves". The minds of Smith and Chouns have been telepathically adjusted by the plants, so they hurry back to Earth carrying "plant spores" that will eventually take over Earth, turning humans into the servants of the "plant people". 

The telepathic abilities of the plants are so great, they were able to reach out through the depths of space and take control of the minds of Smith and Chouns, convincing them that their hyperatomic motors were not functioning, even-though there was actually nothing wrong with the motors. What might be the physical basis of this long-range plant telepathy?

tales of telepathy

When Asimov bothered to write about a mechanism for telepathy, he would mention the electrical signals from neurons in the brain as creating an electromagnetic signal that could be detected by a nearby telepath (see Asimov's story "Think!"). After that brief tip of the hat to sciensy things there was no additional mechanism proposed for telepathic communication except some vague suggestion that "powerful" telepaths could re-wire the brains of others, altering their behavior and memories. In "Each an Explorer", Asimov certainly gave us no clue as to how his telepathic plants could control human thought across millions of miles of space.

I don't think I'll ever understand the popularity of "plant people" in science fiction, but having been trained as a scientist, Asimov did give some thought to how telepathic humans and plants might evolve. 

telepathic signals in outer space

In "Each an Explorer", Asimov suggests that there must have once been a space-traveling animal species in the star cluster that is visited by Smith and Chouns. Asimov hinted that the telepathic plants eventually took control of those animals, reverting them to a primitive technological state in which the animals now do nothing except tend to the needs of their plant masters.

technology-assisted telepathy

Technology-Assisted Telepathy. In the Exode Saga, I imagine that human telepathy is made possible by technology-assisted telepathy that involves nanoscopic endosymbionts. Could a system for technology-assisted telepathy created by an animal species "go wrong" and be "taken over" by dastardly plants? Sometimes I try to imagine how "escaped" nanites might cause problems, but this makes about as much sense as imagining that your laptop computer might escape from you and take over the world. About the worst telepathy disaster I've come up with are the renegade tryp'At.

Next: back to 1941 for "Methuselah's Children"