Falling out of fashion

[bookzombie]

I'm currently reading (and enjoying) Louise Marley's Singer in the Snow, set in a frozen 'lost colony' world where there are people who channel psi-powers through music.

Nothing directly about the book itself but it made me think about how tropes in sf go in and out of fashion. When was the last time you read a book that feature psi-powers as a major part of the story? I'm struggling to think of anything I've read in recent years. The last thing I can think of which features psionics as a major part of the story was the television show Babylon 5, which is a few years ago now.

Comments

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Psi powers were so big in the '80s: Lichtenberg & Zimmer Bradley, to name two biggies. Psi powers still pop up, but it's in the, hmm, less literary books as in Kelley Armstrong's.

[ben-jeapes.livejournal.com]

I'm currently reading Jeff Somers "The Digital Plague" in which psi powers are an established fact for a government-controlled minority (yes, it's the Psi Corps, basically!) - some have powers of compulsion, some are telekinetic. This is taken for granted by the characters and yet a rather nifty nanotechnology device comes as a surprise, to them if not to the readers. I personally feel Somers has got this the wrong way round and it works against the story.