Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Literary source for anti-psionics prejudice?

SteveS · 06-07-2017, 11:13 AM

It might be interesting to invite Michael Andre-Driussi into this discussion, since he did such a good job on other aspects of the literary origins of Traveller. He has written for SJ Games, by the way (specifically GURPS New Sun), so he may even have a SJ Games forum account already.

Additionally, there are some Traveller pioneers who could offer their own histories if they were asked at the right time -- for example, if Marc Miller turned up at a game convention Q&A. Sadly, the most accessible Traveller pioneer is gone. Loren probably could have told us a lot if we had asked him while he was alive; he probably could have written a great JTAS article about it too.

One possible literary explanation for Traveller psionics, particularly suppression, is inversion of literary examples, rather than copying. There are a fair number of examples of psionic aristocracy -- notably the Darkover series, which dates back to the 1950s -- and it's not ridiculous to imagine designers looking at a source and saying, "Let's do the opposite of this."

06-07-2017, 11:13 AM	#21
SteveS Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: near Seattle WA USA	Re: Literary source for anti-psionics prejudice? It might be interesting to invite Michael Andre-Driussi into this discussion, since he did such a good job on other aspects of the literary origins of Traveller. He has written for SJ Games, by the way (specifically GURPS New Sun), so he may even have a SJ Games forum account already. Additionally, there are some Traveller pioneers who could offer their own histories if they were asked at the right time -- for example, if Marc Miller turned up at a game convention Q&A. Sadly, the most accessible Traveller pioneer is gone. Loren probably could have told us a lot if we had asked him while he was alive; he probably could have written a great JTAS article about it too. One possible literary explanation for Traveller psionics, particularly suppression, is inversion of literary examples, rather than copying. There are a fair number of examples of psionic aristocracy -- notably the Darkover series, which dates back to the 1950s -- and it's not ridiculous to imagine designers looking at a source and saying, "Let's do the opposite of this."