The 1950s was an odd time for Science Fiction. After decades of robots and space travel and time machines and external battles, the struggles went inward. Whether you called them psionics, or espers, or any other version of telepaths, SF became about men who fought with their minds. (The other big theme in the 1950s was flying saucers.)
The most powerful editor in SF was John W Campbell and he lead the charge on Psionics, publishing AE van Vogt’s Slan in 1946, and even writing non-fiction articles on mental powers. Astounding became the focal point for psi-fiction as well as other unusual ideas like the Dean Drive. (Life even imitated art as L Ron Hubbard sold a mental SF idea to the masses as a new Science called Dianetics (Astounding, May 1950) and later as a religion that survives today as Scientology.) Readers had become obsessed with the idea of using their minds to do fantastic things.
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