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Trying to identify a story about the population of the earth suddenly developing telepathy. I don't remember much about this story.

  • Suddenly everyone on earth wakes up one morning and can read each other's minds.
  • Chaos ensues as suddenly we can tell who is lying or whatnot.
  • Eventually humans adapt and a new society emerges from the ashes of the old.

I believe i read this in the 90's at some point, if that helps rule out later stories.

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    I can only imagine that 5 minutes after this happened, every relationship in the world would end abruptly in murder :-)
    – Valorum
    Apr 27, 2016 at 19:01
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    Sounds like the punishment inflicted on the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: cantbeatfun.com/Mars/hgttg2.htm#Ref50
    – user1197
    May 5, 2016 at 21:49
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    It was a great read because it examined how relationships would change there may have been stable before, and then how humans evolve to handle the situation.
    – Brill Pappin
    May 6, 2016 at 13:11
  • This question reminds me of another question, where the accepted answer was a story where aliens came to Earth. They gifted makind the power of telepathy, or rather to be able to think as one hive mind. Problem with that is, people didn't seem to get along very well. There was a child who could nearly play nothing because everyone found the toys too dangerous. Only the ball was deemed not too dangerous, so he was sitting in the garden watching it. And in the end, everyone went into individual spaceship to isolate themselves from the hive mind connection.
    – Clockwork
    Mar 12, 2021 at 13:48
  • @BrillPappin Man! I've always wanted to read a novel EXACTLY like you describe. Was hoping one existed like that. Did you ever have any luck finding it?
    – JoeMjr2
    Sep 17, 2021 at 1:24

2 Answers 2

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There is one possibility. This may not be the right book, but certain elements do come close.

The Cosmic Rape (August 1958 Galaxy as "To Marry Medusa"; exp 1958; vt To Marry Medusa 1987) a Hive Mind from the stars invades mankind but finds itself – to its ultimate betterment – catalysing Homo sapiens as a racial entity into one Transcendent gestalt: the sense of homecoming generated by the final pages of this short book is deeply touching.

I only read the shorter version in Galaxy, perhaps there might have been more detail in the expanded novel version. What I do remember is that everybody could read everybody else's minds as they came together in the newly created human-alien hive mind.

Hope it helps. This has been a real challenge to find a book that comes close.

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  • That doesn't sound like the right title, but I'll look it up and see if it rings a bell. Worst case, I've found something else interesting to read :)
    – Brill Pappin
    Sep 26, 2016 at 14:40
  • @BrillPappin My guess is that it's not the right one, but some of it comes close. Finding anything remotely like it has been difficult. I wish you luck if you find and if you do please post the answer here. It would be nice to know what the right book was.
    – a4android
    Sep 27, 2016 at 4:29
  • Absolutely, I suspect it was a more recently published :)
    – Brill Pappin
    Sep 27, 2016 at 16:12
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Chaos Walking trilogy (2008) ("The Knife of Never Letting Go", "The Ask and the Answer", "Monsters of Men") which was adapted into a movie in 2017 and was "so unreleaseable" that it was was delayed by reshoots until this week?

Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series written by American-British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise. The series is named after a line in the first book: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking."

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  • Chaos Walking isn’t everyone reading minds, it’s only half of everyone.
    – Mike Scott
    Mar 12, 2021 at 8:29
  • The titles don't ring a bell, I'll have to look them up, and have a read to see. The key was that it was sudden, one moment normal, the next, everyone can hear each other think.
    – Brill Pappin
    Mar 12, 2021 at 15:26
  • Read the synopsis for the film. In the story i'm thinking about, there was no dystopian future, no shortage of woman, the present was normal now until this event caused chaos.
    – Brill Pappin
    Mar 12, 2021 at 15:37
  • Yeah. It's not even reading minds at all. It's men having their thoughts broadcast indiscriminately.
    – HyperNym
    Jul 25, 2023 at 18:29

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