In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering (especially electronics) to the study (and employment) of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis.
[1][2][3][4] The word "psionics" began as, and always remained, a term of art within the science fiction community[5] and—despite the promotional efforts of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.—it never achieved general currency, even among academic parapsychologists.
[8][9]) The intent was that "psi" would represent the "unknown factor" in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis, experiences believed to be unexplained by any known physical or biological mechanisms.
[23][24] The third was a non-academic: Charles Fort, the author and paranormal popularizer whose 1932 book Wild Talents strongly encouraged credence in the testimony of people who had experienced telepathy and other "anomalous phenomena".
Throughout his career, Campbell had sought grounds for a new "scientific psychology" and he was instrumental in formulating the brainchild of one of his more imaginative science fiction writers—the "Dianetics" of L. Ron Hubbard.
They cite James Blish's Jack of Eagles (1952), Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human (1953), Wilson Tucker's Wild Talent (1954) and Frank M. Robinson's The Power (1956) as examples.
Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (1953) is a pioneering example of a work depicting a society in which people with "psi" abilities are fully integrated.