Josh's Crosstime Salute

In 2009, as part of an internet meme of sorts, I listed "15 books in 15 minutes." I think I listed 18, with two at #14 and three at #15. This is about the three at #15.

When I was 16, I had the great good fortune to travel to Europe for the summer, first with a group of other high school students, then with two different groups of adults with some transition time on my own, before rejoining the first group. While I was in one airport or another, I picked up two science fiction novels - British Penguin editions of John Brunner's TelepathistThe Long Result.

Telepathist tells the story of Gerald Howson, from birth through age 20, and on into his professional life from there. Brunner constructs a world believably reached from where we are in which the safety of Gerald's mother's world is turned on its head by the effects of terrorism coming where nobody expected it would, and their dealing with the invasion, such as it is, of peacekeepers. Among the peacekeepers is a legendary telepathist. Her presence is brief, but it gives us a glimpse into the world of one sort of professional mind-reader.

Gerald was born with a number of defects, any of which might have been a burden but all of which combine to make his life very difficult. Nor is his mother any too supportive, while dad is not in the picture at all (and we learn why not). All he really wants, he thinks, is to matter - being noticed and noteworthy, even on a small scale.

At age 20, his life changes and then changes again. He realizes he is a telepath, though the only things he knows about that are from movies he has watched. And he has a distrust of the government... But he finds somebody who he thinks he can help and he does so, to the best of his ability. Unfortunately for him, his lack of understanding of his abilities draws him to the government's attention, anyway, and they take him away, despite his best efforts.

He found strength in terror.
NO NO NO LEAVE ME ALONE!

The thought blasted out unaimed, and the copter directly above him reacted as though he had riddled it with gunfire. ... it fell crunching among piled rubble, and the rotor blades snapped like dry sticks.

Unbelieving, Howson watched it crash, hardly daring to accept that he could have been responsible. Yet he knew that he was... Moreover, he had driven out the mental voice of the telepathist addressing him, and where the link had formed between them there was a sensation like a half-healed bruise.
...
Elation seized him briefly. If he could do this, he could do anything! Let them come for him; he would drive them back with blasts of mental resistance until they did what he wanted and left him alone.

And then he felt the pain.

His discover that inflicting pain on others hurts him as much and more taught me, even if I learned it more slowly than he (by far). I know it doesn't work that way for everybody or even very many people, but I know it works that way for me and for a signicant percentage of those with whom I work.

This is not a dystopian world, even though it seemed so to him as a youth - The government forces are not the bad guys in this tale! They treat his wounds and weaknesses as well as they can, though it doesn't change his underlying conditions. They offer training in how to use his powers. He is... resistant and distrustful. In his hypervigilance, he "listens in" on a difficult situation and he is moved to act.

In his acting, he is transformed. He's not healed. He's not instantly wise or trained. But he is instantly approachable. And that makes all the difference.

I'm not going to go through the whole plot. I'd like to highlight some of the lessons that I see in the book.

The first, as becomes apparent with the discovery of Gerard, is that great power untrained is problematic. Yes, it is more of a problem with a projecting telepath than with most non-science fiction aptitudes, but it is still a problem in the real world, too.

This lesson is reiterated later in the book, in a slightly different way: just because I think I am giving somebody something valuable doesn't make it so for them. (Some of this makes its way into my story, A Loss of Wonder.) This situation was a problem because of the lack of knowledge/training.

Another: just because somebody has rational reasons for actions doesn't make the actions wise or good. Things that people with power over others do for their own amusement can have harsh consequences for the others.

Things that happen to us have long term impact - emotional/mental, not just physical. This is refected in both positive and negative ways.

Letting others in to help us is as important as helping them is - even if/though it is hard.

And just because we cannot express an idea, art, music, does not mean it is any less artistic or musical - merely all the more frustrating for that.

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The Long Result is a very different tale. This is a brighter future with no telepathy. Instead, we have space colonies and aliens. Our hero, Roald, is an intelligent man in a job that doesn't challenge him. It keeps him busy, to be sure, but it requires no intellectually heavy lifting. His boss is more than a bit annoyed with him for his lack of ambition.

"It's no business of mine if your ambition is limited to supervising trade in sonnets and string quartets from Viridis - you can stick at that job till you rot, for all I care."

It might have helped if his boss had previously explained to Roald why he was hired.

Roald is about to get pushed way out of his comfort zone. And he's going to thrive.

Lessons along the way?

The habit of coasting is limiting.

Breaking past low expectations - our own or others' - is hard, but often worth it. Unfortunately, the results are not always what those who are urging us on expect them to be.

Sometimes, it takes events beyond our control to force us to grow.

Big growth/change in ourselves can result in loss of what had been important relationships. That doesn't make it a bad thing, but it doesn't make it easy, either.

Sometimes knowledge is better held than shared. Sometimes knowledge is better shared than held. Telling the difference between these is a lot harder than it looks.

Our actions have way bigger potential ripples than we ourselves can see at any given moment. Often, bigger than we will ever know.