35
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Which was the first story featuring a psychic being unable to control their own powers and destroying their surroundings with them?
In the story “Obstinate Uncle Otis” (July 1941), by Robert Arthur, the eponymous Otis Morks is a stubborn Vermont farmer struck by lightning. This grants him the power that whenever he asserts that a ...
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21
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What was the first work that used an earworm as a defense against a mental attack or probe?
An earlier possibility than The Demolished Man that uses a recited passage to block another mind's attempt to mentally control the target shows up in Donovan's Brain (1942). The protagonist, Dr. Cory,...
- 138k
19
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Short story about a psychically-linked community with a collective delusion
I believe this is the story "Cobwebs" by Ray Brown, which was only published in the August 1987 issue of Analog.
The story is framed as a backgrounder for a new generation of non-telepathic ...
- 138k
18
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Which was the first story featuring a psychic being unable to control their own powers and destroying their surroundings with them?
1952: "Tonight the Sky Will Fall!", a novella by Daniel F. Galouye; first published in Imagination, May 1952, available at the Internet Archive.
Nineteen years before The Lathe of Heaven, ...
- 169k
17
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Looking for an old story where humans conceal their newly-discovered psychic abilities from alien visitors
“Ethical Quotient”
This story has been the object of identification requests on other sites, for example here.
What details I can find match the description in the question. The main character is ...
- 118k
17
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Sci-fi book series about a society of human descendants on an alien world, who are contacted many years later by a newly-arrived ship from Earth
Might this be the Darkover series, by Marion Zimmer Bradley...? There are a total of 45 works in the series, with the first having been published in 1958, and the last in 2016.
The Goodreads page for ...
- 128k
17
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Boy joins creepy psychic co-op found family
This is very likely to be Theodore Sturgeon's short story "Baby Is Three" (1952), or the fix-up novel that incorporates it, More Than Human (1953). See the answer for another question about ...
- 14k
16
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What was the first work that used an earworm as a defense against a mental attack or probe?
There's a passage in Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1900: Gutenberg) where the main character (Kim) recites the multiplication table to himself to prevent himself from being hypnotized. I guess it depends on ...
- 2,534
15
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Future Psychic gladiator. Criminals bribe him to throw match. Wins it by. projecting Roman soldier with short sword, defeating projected monster
This story is "Dream Fighter", by Bob Shaw, which appeared in the February 1977 issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction". Your memories of the tale are good. The ...
- 7,901
13
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Which was the first story featuring a psychic being unable to control their own powers and destroying their surroundings with them?
Probably not the first by a long shot, but something to get the ball rolling.
1971: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. A version was published as a two-part serial in Amazing Science Fiction ...
- 169k
13
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Identify a story where a man keeps coming under psychic attack, and grows stronger as a result
Could it be Frank M Robinson's The Power?
The hero is being stalked by just one "superman" rather than several, but otherwise it's close. The superman makes several attempts to kill him, all ...
- 13k
12
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Looking for a Sci-Fi Novel About Psychic Child
This is a long shot, but the book is possibly Jack the Bodiless by Julian May. I think it's a long shot because Jack the Bodiless has an involved plot that is a lot more complicated than your question ...
- 113k
11
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What was that story about teen cousins who get mental powers from polluted water?
Others See Us by William Sleator. Not a short story, but a short book.
Sixteen-year-old Jared falls into a toxic swamp just before the yearly summer reunion at Grandmother's house. He comes away with ...
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11
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40s/50s short story about a mutant family with psi powers
Sounds like the Hogben series by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, which was also the answer to the old question "Hillbilly-type family with supernatural powers". Here is a video ad by Neil ...
- 169k
11
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1980s science fiction novel with two infertile protagonists (one an astronaut) and a "psychic vampire" antagonist
Is this Thorns (1967) by Robert Silverberg...?
The Goodreads synopsis mentions two protagonists and an antagonist matching your description:
Minner Burris, a space traveller whose body was taken ...
- 128k
10
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An animated sci-fi movie with a fully armoured antagonist and a pale looking child
Alright, thanks to some comments which pointed out similar movies, I was able to find it by searching through "similar movies" one by one.
Its name wasn't anything like "Aiko". It actually was ...
- 7,803
10
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science fiction short story of a house of misfits with talking toaster?
A Place to Stay for a Little While by Jim Aikin
Excerpt:
It was a very unusual household among whose members were a man who patched holes in the world, a shapechanger, and even a talking radio.
It ...
- 13.2k
10
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Which was the first story featuring a psychic being unable to control their own powers and destroying their surroundings with them?
I wasn't sure the Uncle Otis story would count as an answer to your question, as it seemed to me that Uncle Otis used his power in a controlled and purposeful (if deranged) way. Anyway, "...
- 169k
10
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Identify a story where a man keeps coming under psychic attack, and grows stronger as a result
This is another answer where I'm going solely by memory....the question made me think of The Darkness on Diamondia by Van Vogt.
There's an officer who's sent to the planet Diamondia to oversee the ...
- 28.1k
10
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Name of a 1970's ESP/Psychic-themed "docudrama" series?
This show might be "The Sixth Sense", from the early 1970s.
The description below is from Wikipedia.
The Sixth Sense is an American paranormal thriller television series featuring Gary ...
- 7,901
9
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Short story about aliens who use technology to surpass psychic abilities
Could this be "Limiting Factor" by Theodore R. Cogswell?
"Oh, you wouldn't be doing that," said Mr. Thwiskumb mildly. "Those people down there aren't Ordinaries."
"What!"
"Dear me, no. They ...
- 709k
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Novel about a family of psychics involving a longterm plan by the precog to ensure their survival
Might this be Spoonbenders (2017) by Daryl Gregory?
Spoonbenders follows the lives of a "somewhat dysfunctional and often hilarious" Telemachus family. The main characters include: Teddy ...
- 128k
9
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Short story - teenage boy (virgin) develops PK powers fuelled by frustrated lust, demonstrates for a girl, persuades her to have sex, loses powers
Push No More by Robert Silverberg.
I remember reading this some time in the 1970s as a teenager and it made a big impression on me. It was first published in 1972 and it's been anthologised several ...
- 113k
9
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What's the show & episode where an inmate escapes jail via astral projection?
Is this "Life Is For The Taking," a segment of the Playboy anthology film, Inside Out (1991)...?
Playboy does to softcore sex films what HBO's Tales from the Crypt did for horror. Contains ...
- 128k
8
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Novel where a kid learns psychic powers by squeezing little cubes with binary numbers on them?
This is Christopher and his Magic Powers by Richard Koff.
Christopher is 13 and often too smart for his own good. He hates
school and can’t seem to stay out of trouble. On a dare he knocks on a
...
- 709k
8
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80s TV show about kids with psychic powers saving the world from shapeshifting aliens
Sounds like you're thinking of Under the Mountain, an early 1980s TV series produced in New Zealand, and based on a novel of the same name.
The Wikipedia synopsis matches most of the plot points you ...
- 128k
8
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Sci-fi short story compilation, including a story about a protagonist who erases the universe from existence with his mind
I believe that the first story is Solipsist by Fredric Brown, a very short story of just 356 words, first published in 1954. It deals with a man called Walter B. Jehovah, who became a solipsist after ...
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8
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Identify a story where a man keeps coming under psychic attack, and grows stronger as a result
Not all the details match up, but what came to mind for me was The Whole Man
by John Brunner:
After an unspecified crisis in a near-future England where telepathy has been discovered, the authorities ...
- 3,363
8
votes
Secret super people
Is it possible you're remembering The Time Wanderers (English 1987, original title Волны гасят ветер 1986, alternate English title The Waves Extinguish the Wind, 2023) by the Strugatsky brothers?
...
- 138k
7
votes
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Short story about a psychic awakening his true potential
The story is called Carrier by Robert Sheckley. I read it years ago from a collection of stories in Space Odyssey: An Anthology Of Great Science Fiction Stories. However it seems to have first ...
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