Abstract
At the time of the rise of the physical sciences and their cold equations, the paranormal emerged in France as a Cartesian reaction to this invasion of "res extensa", which threatened to sweep away the privileged role of mind as opposed to matter. From Mesmer's famous bucket and Balzac's fascination with magnetism, to Maupassant at the other end of the century, paranormal powers are seen as forces emanating from the realm of mind. Despite the fact that common wisdom sees American, indeed Anglo-Saxon, culture as non-Cartesian, rooted in a materialist world view, there has been a strong renewal of interest, in recent SF, in such matters as telepathy and telekinesis, supported by developments in the neurosciences. Neuroscience, in seeking to 'explain' telepathy by attributing it to material forces, in a sense resurrects the paranormal as a sort of holy grail for modern science. Anglo-Saxon SF, it seems, in the age of multidimensional physics and neuroscience, has followed suit. This paper examines the role of the paranormal in examples of recent hard science fiction.
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