Book Review: Psi High and Others

Book Review: 'Psi High and Others' by Alan E. Nourse

2 / 5 Stars

'Psi High and Others' (157 pp.) was published by Ace Books in 1967. The cover art is by Don Ivan Punchatz.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) is perhaps best known for his 1974 novel The Bladerunner, and his 1963 anthology The Counterfeit Man and Others, a perennial selection of the Scholastic Book Club during the Baby Boomer years. 

'Psi High' consists of three novellas. All are set in the 22nd century, and are framed using the plot device of benevolent aliens watching over human affairs from afar, forbidden to interfere. At the same time, however, the aliens are inclined to see that mankind rises from his self-inflicted handicaps and achieves emancipation among the other intelligent races of the galaxy. 

In 'The Martyr', a complicated medical procedure known as Rejuvenation can restore youthful vigor, and lengthen the lifespan, of the privileged few allowed to receive it. Given that the politically powerful and well-connected control access to Rejuvenation, such access has become a tool for coercion and control. Senator Dan Fowler, a genuine Man of the People, is using all of his considerable conviction and statecraft to try and make Rejuvenation available to the masses. But what if Rejuvenation isn't the remarkable gift it would seem to be ?

In 'Psi High' a malevolent alien, disguised as a Terran, roams the Earth on a mission of mayhem. Only telepaths, those with 'high' psi capabilities, can detect the alien. But of course, those with psi capabilities are hated and feared by some of their fellow humans. Can those gifted with psi powers nobly act to save their fellow humans - however bigoted these might be - from the alien threat ?

In 'Mirror, Mirror', hostile aliens have secreted their ship in the clouds covering the surface of Saturn. From a nearby space station, the story's protagonists try to find and destroy the aliens by mentally piloting attack drones down into the murk. But the aliens have thwarted these efforts by responding with devastating psychic attacks. Can Dorie Kendall from the psi academy discover a way to defeat the aliens, or is the Earth doomed to fall under an extraterrestrial invasion ?

I finished 'Psi High and Others' underwhelmed. While Nourse is certainly a more gifted prose stylist than those of his contemporaries who were writing sci-fi in the 1960s, the fact is that these three novellas are dull and unexciting. The narratives in these novellas are reliant on protracted dialogue passages, in which the characters indulge in melodramatic exchanges. The denouements of 'Psi High' and 'Mirror Mirror' rely on gimmicky contrivances that fail to live up to the overheated nature of the emotional and psychological confrontations that underpin the narratives.

These stories do promote a note of confidence and optimism in the human potential. But by 1967, when these stories were published, the burgeoning New Wave movement was expressing a more skeptical, and more nuanced, attitude towards humanism, and the meliorism of Nourse's stories already was becoming passe.