Humans Are Psychic in the Future

In many science fiction stories, human beings (although often only a minority thereof) are shown as having Magic Psychic Powers in the future. There is frequently no explanation of where these abilities could have come from between the audience's time and the setting of the show, nor, if these abilities were supposed to always have been present, why they only became accepted common knowledge (as opposed to dismissed as pseudo-science) in the future. This usually goes hand-in-hand with one or another kind of official recognition or registration efforts.

This is sometimes justified in story through resort to the idea of Evolutionary Levels. Compare Telepathic Spacemen, which is primarily concerned with aliens with psychic powers; the two tropes, of course, can and do appear in the same stories.

This trope may have first arisen from science fiction writers keen on initial research into claims of psychic powers in the 1960s and 1970s. In modern day such claims are generally considered bogus, but in the past, it seemed yet another body of knowledge just about to unfold, fooling more than one respected scientist along the way. John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, was one such believer, and he encouraged his writers (including luminaries like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein) to write stories including psychic abilities.

Another source of the idea may have been the "Age of Aquarius" concept, popular among the New Age movements, but that appeared around 1900 if not earlier. According to it the position of equinox in one or another zodiac constellation corresponds to dominant technology (the concept is beautiful, but the timings are off). The current age — of Pisces — saw the rise of Christianity and later the industrial civilization. In the next age, which may have already begun, or may begin in 1-2 centuries, the occult sciences and paranormal stuff are going to shine.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• AKIRA, both the manga and the anime, revolves around the ESPers, including especially the title character.
• The Topless of Diebuster. Humanity is starting to evolve the abilities of its enemies. While the most talented can bend physics around them, it is still a flawed power that can be both hard to control and lost with adulthood.
• E's Otherwise has a "species" of human suddenly flare up with incredible psychic power, but normal humans ostracize them.
• Gundam:
  • The Universal Century timeline is all about this, with some people developing into what are called Newtypes and an ideological debate over whether or not they're the next stage of human evolution. The alternate universe spinoff After War Gundam X takes a different look at the same concept.
  • Newtypes also exist in canon in the Cosmic Era, though not nearly as focused on as other series with newtypes.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 features something similar with the Innovators, humans with telepathic abilities enhanced by GN Particles. Telepathy turns out to be a tremendously important tool in First Contact with an inscrutable alien race.
• Psyren explains this as some kind of particle in the air that causes the human body to develop psy powers or die.
• Toward the Terra is all about this. It's eventually revealed to be the result of genetic engineering.

Comic Books

• 2000 AD:
  • Judge Dredd has the Psi-Division Judges, most notably Psi-Judge Anderson.
  • In the same universe is Strontium Dog, in which a nuclear war has turned a lot of Britain's population into mutants. Although most of them have no powers, psychic abilities like telepathy seem to be the most common.
• In an issue of Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, Rufus has a huge-foreheaded guest professor from the 38th century come to discuss telekinetic drum solos with his class.
• In ElfQuest's future Jink and Rebels storylines, some of humans are "tweaked" for telepathy because the now-hidden elves allegedly possessed it. It's later revealed in the 'present day' storyline that the human Shuna can send to other humans after decades in proximity to the elves and their Palace.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Saturn Girl and the other natives of Saturn's moon, Titan have telepathy. It varies in different continuities whether the various aliens in the 30th century are Human Aliens or Earth colonists who got superpowers.
• Nexus has a certain percentage of the human population as telepaths in the future. Several important characters, like Stanislaus Korivitsky, Michana Loomis, and possibly Horatio Hellpop. Also, anyone who survives decapitation develops psychic abilities.
• X-Men and similar X-titles portray their mutants as the next stage in human evolution. One of the most common abilities in mutants is telepathy since that will be the most likely outcome of humanity.

Fan Works

• The failure of this trope to happen in real life is parodied in Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space.
  "And didn't you also invent Psionics?" asked Buster. "The advanced science of the mind that would enable us to cure the aliments of humanity, read each other's thoughts, see past and future events, and electrocute our classmates through telekinesis?"
  "Indeed!" said the acclaimed scientist, preening visibly.
  "And didn't that turn out to be a load of codswallop?"
• Rocketship Voyager is ostensibly a 1950s sci-fi magazine story set in the far future of 2020. Voyager uses Twin Telepathy to communicate across intersolar distances. It also has a psionic-guided weapon system, though we only see Martians using it.

Films — Live-Action

• Beneath the Planet of the Apes, although technically they're mutant humans.
• Dr. Kate McCrae is revealed early on in The Black Hole to have ESP.
• In Children of the Damned, the semi-sequel to Village of the Damned (1960), the cells of the children are said to be advanced to millions of years ahead.
• Judge Anderson in Dredd. Unlike the comics, she's the first psychic judge and the only known mutant to have Psychic Powers and no physical deformities.
• Hardcore Henry is set in the future, and the main villain Akan has powerful telekinetic abilities. Blood comes out of his mouth when he uses them.
• The Last Mimzy: Well, not in the Crapsack World future from which Mimzy was sent, but an even later future in which a teacher tells the story of Emma and Noah to an assembled class. This is justified because Emma gains psychic powers from the objects from the future and then gives some of her DNA to Mimzy. Said DNA was then used to "cure" the sick people of the future, and presumably was responsible for their new abilities.

• In Looper, which takes place 20 Minutes into the Future, 10% of the population is telekinetic, or TK. Most of them are only able to clumsily move small objects, such as coins, but this becomes a Chekhov's Gun with The Reveal that there is at least one person who's a strong enough TK to use their abilities to kill.
• Starship Troopers: In the 22nd century, some humans are displaying latent psychic abilities and demographic tests are conducted to find people for the Federation's Psy-Corps division. To quote an ad that's shown on the TV: "If you think you're psychic... maybe you are!"
• Star Wars is only sort of an example, since, while certainly being a futuristic setting, it is technically set "a long time ago".
• Some mutants living on Mars in Total Recall (1990) are psychic. Some are beggars make a living trying to impress tourists by reading their minds and guessing their birthdays. Kuato, a resistance leader, is much more powerful.

Literature

• Childhood's End has all of the world's children slowly becoming psychic and forming a hive mind capable of making rivers flow upstream and changing the moon's rotation speed, before they finally Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, destroying the Earth in the process.
• The Chrysalids has humans developing telepathy. The ones developing telepathy try keeping it hidden from the main population due to their extreme phobia of mutations (a.k.a. deviants).
• The City and the Stars: At some point in the Backstory, humans upgraded themselves to become telepaths. It was a part of larger improvement effort to bring themselves on par with more advanced aliens. By the start of the novel the inhabitants of Diaspar have long lost the ability, though they still command their machines telepathically. The humans of Lys are still telepaths.
• Darkover: While some humans possess psychic powers as a consequence of crossbreeding with the alien chieri, others are shown to just have innate psychic potential, which can be awakened by exposure to telepaths, the psychoactive pollen of the Kireseth flower or matrix crystals.
• The Demolished Man, has espers (from "ESP"), who make getting away with murder almost impossible.
• The eponymous characters in the Dragonriders of Pern series, set thousands of years in the future, are chosen for their telepathic and empathic abilities. Though by the main storyline, knowledge of psychic powers in any scientific way is long gone, and the Riders rely on their Dragons to tell them if someone is a likely candidate.
• Used in Dune as one of the many effects of the spice Melange, though true transcendental mental powers require massive doses that only Spacing Guild Navigators and Kwisatz Haderachs can survive. The Bene Gesserit are a downplayed form without the enhancements of the spice, having Enlightenment Superpowers based around extreme control of their own biology and psychological manipulation of others that toe the line between super-science and mysticism.
• In Enchantress from the Stars, human societies go through three stages that boil down to childhood (which would be before modern science), adolescence, and adulthood. During the "adulthood" of a society, they learn how to communicate through telepathy.
• The Foundation Series, set in the far future, has several different sources of people with Psychic Powers.
  • Introduced in "The Mule", the titular antagonist as a mutant whose Emotion Control ability allows him to Emotion Bomb his enemies and Brainwash individual characters to serve him indefinitely. He's even used it to kill. His actions are a direct cause for each major conflict until Foundation and Earth.
  • While their mental powers were assumed in "The Mule" ("Part Two"), the Second Foundationers weren't introduced on-screen until "Search by the Mule". They gained their powers of telepathy and subtle Brainwashing from a deep understanding of human psychology on both the personal and societal levels, naturally developing the ability to screw with minds and keep Seldon's plan in motion.
  • Introduced in Foundation's Edge, Gaia is a Hive Mind of humans, plants, bacteria, and even the non-biological systems of air and rock contribute to the gestalt. Individual parts (such as humans) have some psychic abilities, such as empathic senses and Emotion Control, but tend to avoid using their powers as much as possible. Working together gives them the ability to affect other people across astronomical distances. It also Ret Cons the origin of the Mule, claiming him to be an aberrant Gaian.
  • Introduced in Foundation and Earth, the Solarians are transhumans who have became hermaphrodites and have bio-engineered "Transducer Lobes" in their brains, which harness local thermal energy to give them Mind over Matter powers.
• From the New World takes place 1000 years after psychic users emerged in the twenty-first century, and focuses heavily on how the society of the protagonists tries to preserve the human race through its genetic and social engineering. The toll that these measures take on its protagonists is the center of conflict for most of the story.
• In the Galactic Milieu novels, having every member of a species being psychic is the main criteria for entry into Galactic civilization (and the fact that humans were let in before this point causes all sorts of trouble).
• Probably the best explanation for some of the abilities in The Giver Quartet. The Giver has the ability to transmit memories via touch, which Jonas is able to do to Gabe later on inadvertently. Years later, in Messenger, Jonas seems to have some sort of remote viewing ability, Matty can heal via touch, and Kira from Gathering Blue, has some sort of psychic ability when she weaves.
• Hive England in the Hive Mind (2016) series has about 0.1% of their population with borderline telepathy. Real telepaths are much rarer, about one in every five million. Exactly where this ability came from is unknown.

• Telepathy is a normal part of society, complete with elaborate codes and taboos, in The Hour Before Morning.
• Known Space has a plethora of telepathic species, which include humans and dolphins by 2105.
• In F. Paul Wilson's LaNague Federation, there are psi-schools and psi-potential readings in every person's file. One psi is powerful enough to kill people in a particularly unpleasant manner and another is capable of subjugating a race of aliens with her powers.
• Ursula K. Le Guin made telepathy a part of Ekumen society in The Left Hand of Darkness, but dropped the idea in the Hainish books written later because she decided it was too implausible.
• In Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future, several species of far-future human have managed to develop telepathy to control other, more dimwitted but physically superior, species of human. The kicker is that most of these telepathic species are stone-age level at best, with the narrative suggesting telepathy is merely the end result of natural coevolution of communicational symbiosis between species, while it's implied that the only actually advanced telepathic species, the star-faring descendants of the original humans who fled the Earth millions of years ago, utilize technological means.
• Methuselah's Children: The Howards' eugenics program occasionally produces children with mental or physical disabilities and telepathy. They are used to secretly alert the families that the authorities are coming for them.
• In "The Monster", we meet resurrected humans from four different epochs. The ancient Egyptian and present-day human are of no interest. The near-future human is frighteningly quick-thinking and able to mentally operate museum machinery and kill his captors. A nuclear bomb does kill him, though. The far-future human can brush off blaster fire, stop nuclear explosions and teleport to extrasolar planets. It is never mentioned if humans deliberately upgraded their genetics or there was some other reason they improved so much.
• Andre Norton's Moonsinger series used this: in the first book, narrator Krip wonders suspiciously if the fellow he's talking to is esper — but doesn't seem to think it's at all odd to probe with his own esper powers. In the second book, someone takes a reading and comments that Krip's psychic ability level is seven; the people who knew him are startled, because he was "only" a level five a fairly short time ago. The phrasing, by the way, makes clear that five is considered pretty high.
• In The Night's Dawn Trilogy, the Edenist faction of humanity have the "affinity gene" which gives them a form of telepathy, albeit only with other Edenists and their biological constructs. The vast majority of humans (the Adamists) make do with good ol' fashioned brain implants and other flavors of cybernetics. The Affinity gene allows Edenists to upload their consciousness to their vast orbital habitats when they die.
• In Paradox, espers are extremely rare among humans and most of the Pelted races they created, but they are known to exist. However, there is one Pelted race (the Glaseah) that is almost entirely composed of espers, and the Eldritch are another human offshoot race of espers.
• In Portent, a new generation of children psychically attuned to other humans and the general ecosphere are anticipated to herald a re-emergence of a long-lost human ability.
• Rebuild World takes place After the End of such a society, where everyone was one due to Transhuman advances, called an Old World Connector, mainly known for their inborn Organic Technology wireless Brain/Computer Interface, with Mega Corps doing experiments to try and bring these back as such people are incredibly useful but rare in the present. The psychic part comes as part of The Reveal that such people broadcast their self-image and emotions into others around them unconsciously.
• The Red Dwarf novels say that the luck virus works mainly by enhancing a person's sixth sense.
• The novel Riadan has most humans evolving the ability to communicate telepathically. In fact, the youngest generation shown develops other abilities, such as levitation and teleportation. Kinda makes it difficult for parents to ground them, doesn't it?
• Rifters Trilogy: Telepathy is explained as a result of quantum entanglement processes in the brain. People can "tune in" to other people's minds under favourable conditions, mostly involving chemically altered states of mind.
• In the Sector General series, humanity has telepathic potential... in its evolutionary history. Human development took some steps toward it, but never got all the way and the capacity is now atrophied and useless. When some characters get contacted through it, the feeling is compared to having a wire brush taken to one's brain.
• In Sholan Alliance, human telepaths weren't recognized until the Terrans met the Sholans, a certain percentage of which have psi abilites.
• The main character of Star Rangers by Andre Norton comes from a planet where, apparently, the average level of psychic power was "six point six". This is implied to be almost scarily high. It may have contributed to politicians/bureaucrats from a less-gifted world deciding to blast the hero's homeworld.
• Mentioned out of hand in Starship Troopers, though Johnny isn't sure if the specialist he encounters is psychic, or just has really sensitive hearing.
• In The Stars My Destination, everyone is able to learn to teleport, or "jaunte" from point to point, with various personal limitations. As well as a very few who can transmit and/or receive thoughts.
• Stranger in a Strange Land: Mike learned psychic powers from the Martians. He teaches it to his followers as well.
• As are most but not all other sentients in the Theirs Not to Reason Why series. This turns out to be due to the Feyori, who deliberately interbred with the matter-based races periodically in order to guard against their ancient enemy, the Greys, for whom psychic energy is poisonous.
• Time for the Stars: Telepathic twins are used to communicate between relativistic ships and earth.
• The Tower and the Hive books feature a future where psychics are not only well-known but integral to interstellar travel. The prequel To Ride Pegasus says that humans always had the ability, but it was only able to be objectively established and properly studied once science produced a "Goosegg" test that measures the relevant brainwaves.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5 has the Psi Corps, the Orwellian organization that regulates and polices human telepaths, and the much rarer telekinetics and empaths. Justified in this case because the psychic members of humanity and other species had been Touched by Vorlons about a hundred years before. Occasionally a subject of comment, "As You Know, people suddenly gained telepathic powers about a hundred years ago." According to the books, we always had telepaths among us (as do the other major races), it just wasn't academically proven until the early 21st century.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978): In "War of the Gods", Commander Adama attributes many of Count Iblis' "miracles" to Psychic Powers, saying that even he can bend a spoon or two and move small items across a table if he concentrates hard enough.
• Implied in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures, as Rufus has prophetic dreams and seems to hypnotize a customer into buying things from Nail World.
• The Aurons from Blake's 7 are a race of telepathic humanoids. It's argued in-universe and out of universe amongst the writers whether they're Human Aliens or a Human Subspecies.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Planet of the Spiders", the Doctor identifies a mentalist stage performer who has started to develop genuine ESP yet represses it because he's afraid of going insane. The Doctor assures him that such power lies dormant in everyone. In "The Talons of Weng Chiang" a 19th-century stage magician, Li H'sen Chang, has been instructed in mindreading and hypnotism by Magnus Greel, a time traveler from the 51st century, implying that the knowledge has developed over time to exploit this dormant ability.
    Greel: Chang, I have given you mental powers undreamt of in this century. You are thousands of years ahead of your time. What can you fear from these primitives?
  • The Haemovores from "The Curse of Fenric" are descended from a potential timeline in which chemical pollution has mutated humanity into leech-like aquatic vampires, whose telepathy renders them vulnerable to the psychic barrier mounted by the faith of their intended victims.
• In Firefly, and, by extension, in the film Serenity, River Tam turns out to have been given psychic powers. There are some implications in the R. Tam Sessions that River had psychic abilities before she went to the Academy, but that the Academy's work greatly enhanced them.
• The Observers from Fringe have telepathy powerful enough to Mind Rape people into vegetables.
• Red Dwarf has Touch-Ts, who can use Touch Telepathy. They are never seen in the show, but Lister has to bluff being one when impersonating a Space Corps officer and accidentally wearing a Touch-T uniform in "Trojan".
• Stargate SG-1 has a storyline wherein humans are evolving (slowly) towards a telepathic, telekinetic 'superhuman' state, and in a number of episodes, a few characters get pushed forwards into this state — temporarily, since the awesome mind-powers tend to come with drawbacks attached. This evolutionary step actually happened to the Ancients first, so, as they are a past evolution of humans, it's sort of "Humans Were Psychic in the Past".
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • In the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", it's apparently a routine thing for people in the future to be tested for ESP, and their ESP quotient is on file along with more mundane statistics such as height, weight and age. This was never seen again, though.
    • In "Is There In Truth No Beauty?", there is a blind human telepath, Dr Miranda Jones, who has studied telepathy on Vulcan and is looking to work with the telepathic alien Medusans, who no human can see without going insane. The origin of her telepathy, whether it was somehow linked to her blindness or whether or not she was a purebred human was not explored in detail.
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we're introduced to Betazoids, Human Aliens with telepathic powers, and we already had Vulcans. Not quite the same thing, until later it's revealed that the reason there are so many humanlike species in our galaxy is because they all came from the same genetic material. So humans don't have telepathic powers (usually) but it would make sense for the federation to keep an eye out just to be sure.
• The Weevils in Torchwood are hypothesized to be what humanity turns into in the future and able to sense if another Weevil is being beaten up or if there is something unnaturally "wrong" with a person.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): The episode "Quarantine" is set in a future where survivors of World War III have reverted to living in Arcadia, eschewing all mechanical technology, but having developed a wide range of psychic powers and Organic Technology.
• In UFO (1970), which is set in the year 1980, Extra-Sensory Perception is a mental condition being treated by mainstream psychiatrists. While most sufferers adjust to its effects, the subject of the episode "E.S.P." cannot cope with knowing everything that's going to happen before it occurs.

Tabletop Games

• Dark Sun is a post-apocalyptic Dungeons & Dragons setting where nearly every intelligent creature has some kind of psychic ability.
• In Eclipse Phase, some humans are infected with the benign Watts-MacLeod nanovirius strain, which seems to do nothing but give them psychic powers, divided into two main categories: Psi-Chi is available to all psychics and allows the individual to alter their own mind, while Psi-Gamma is only for strong psychics and lets them alter other people's minds. However, as this nanovirus was created by the TITANs acting under orders from the ETI and every other known strain of nanovirus causes horrible death and/or mutation into an exsurgant threat, the gamemaster is encouraged to explore the possibility that this strain is a more subtle form of infiltration by the TITANs waiting to serve its true purpose or to arrange encounters with individuals who believe this to be the case. Whether these people are right or not is never answered, but it is revealed that a third level of power is available to exsurgents, Psi-Epsilon, which allows them to alter reality.
• In Fading Suns, exposure to the energies of Jumpspace before shielding became mandatory on all jumpships kickstarted human psionic potential. Presently most of the neo-Medieval peasantry fear psychics and the Church persecutes them, but as their powers are one of the few things that can stop the Symbiots some sects have started to allow psychics to "repent" instead of being burned at the stake.
• GURPS: Psionics comes with a table full of possible explanations for the GM, ranging from Broken Masquerades to frisky aliens. It advises to leave them unexplained unless they're plot-related.
• Many citizens of Alpha Complex in Paranoia have psychic powers of some kind, or some other mutant weirdness going on. Rather than simply fail to explain where these powers come from, the game offers quite a lot of different explanations from radiation to design.
• The Reign setting Out of the Violent Planet completely inverts this trope — humanity is so terribly psi-blind that aliens completely failed to recognize us as a sentient race and wondered where our keepers were when they came to Earth. In fact, we're so not psychic that the aliens' strongest telepathic assaults might make a human sneeze, and that's if the alien rolled really well.
• Subverted in Shadowrun; instead of people becoming psychic 20 Minutes into the Future, magic came back. But psionics were introduced in 4th edition as a variant magical tradition as part of the move towards magic working as a form of Clap Your Hands If You Believe.
• In Traveller, psionics form the foundation of the Zhodani's empire but were unknown in the other branches of humanity until the Long Night. When the Third Imperium arose, it came to suspect that many of the "psionics institutes" were funded by the Zhodani and suppressed them. Prejudice against psions persists.
• The Trinity Universe (White Wolf) RPGs Aberrant and Trinity have this in two flavors. Humans can become one of two "species", Novas or Psions. The former are really powerful and have a variety of superhuman abilities, but are prone to all the negative power tropes, including The Corruption and Power Degeneration, collectively known as "Taint". Psions are less powerful and have narrower sets of abilities, but are also far more stable. Though both existed at the same time, novas had a big surge of unexplained "eruptions" in the early 21st century and then sharply tapered off their "birth rate" (even as the bulk of their number were kicked off Earth), effectively being replaced by latent psions. The decline of novas and their being kicked off aren't coincidental; the "Aberrant War" that led to novas being slaughtered or fleeing Earth was started with the reveal that the Mutant Draft Board was secretly sterilizing all novas in the name of Muggle Power.
• Unhallowed Metropolis sports its own brand of psychically endowed humans in the post-apocalyptic London, circa 2105. These powers range from the standard Telekinesis and Telepathy to Pyrokinesis and Electrokinesis, with the relative potential of any given individuals gift ranging from being able to levitate a quarter to creating kilometers-wide earthquakes. Treads the line between Blessed with Suck and Cursed with Awesome considering that, unlike a happy setting such as Warhammer 40,000 where going insane is the price you pay for having psychic powers, in Unhallowed, psychic powers are the price you pay for BEING insane to begin with.
• Warhammer 40,000 has psykers, who serve many vital roles throughout the Imperium. In theory they're rare, as in one out of a billion, but when "billions" is very low for an Imperial planet and some have populations in the trillions you start running into problems. It's even said that humanity is becoming a psychic species as the rate of psykers increases. Additionally, psychic power largely plays the role that magic does in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.
  • Also characteristically made Grimdark. Psykers, when left untrained, are prone to things such as insanity up to possession; it is mentioned in the fluff that psykers, allowed to experiment with their powers on more liberal worlds, opened the way to demonic invasions that contributed to the end the first human empire.
  • It's also mentioned that psychic power tends to directly correlate to mental instability. The highest grades of Psyker (everything above Beta) have an almost 100% likelihood to be too insane to exist as a functional human being. Pretty scary, considering that grade of psyker can do things like rip buildings in half.
  • Also notable that the training process for most psykers often lead them to become: Astropaths, who often lose their eyes and are responsible for the setting's faster-than-light communication; members of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition; or Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard. Psykers that don't have the potential to be of any use to the Imperium are shipped to Terra and hooked up to the Golden Throne, where their psychic powers run the Astronomican until they shrivel and die. Plus the other races' psykers and the Chaos psykers.
  • In Earth's prehistory, humanity was guided by a small group of very powerful psychics known as "Shamans", who could reincarnate after their deaths. But, with the rise of the Chaos Gods they decided to commit mass suicide and collectively reincarnate into a single immortal, who would become the God Emperor of Mankind millennia later. After the mass suicide psykers were practically unknown among humanity until the invention of Warp drive and exposure to the Warp's energies.

Video Games

• Used with dolphins in Ecco the Dolphin.
• The Pilgrims of Endless Space are mystics and, through the magical mysteries of Dust nanotech, implied to have extraordinary powers. On the individual level, all species — including robotic species — appear susceptible to becoming this when exposed to Dust, and come in a few general flavors that conveniently help you run various aspects of your economy or military more effectively.
• In the backstory to Escape Velocity: Nova, the Vell-os developed psychic abilities sometime prior to 980 AD, or possibly 1478 AD,^note there are some inconsistencies between the timeline preamble document and what's indicated by the game proper which they used to leave Earth. In the game proper, psychics are reasonably common among the Polaran humans, and as evidenced by the Player Character in the Vell-os and Polaris storylines, are starting to develop among mainstream humans as well. The epilogues to four of the seven storylines reveal that psychic powers eventually become endemic to humanity, after which we Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and become precursors to an unnamed alien race.
• Fallout has Psykers, most of which gained their powers either from mutation or unexplained means. There are a few in each Fallout game, and notable examples include the Master and a handful of his followers, Professor Calvert of Point Lookout, and Mama Murphy.
• Subverted in Final Fantasy XIII-2; apparently, humans are magic in the future.
• Zig-zagged in Live A Live. While none of the characters in Distant Future are shown to have psychic powers, Akira, the protagonist of the Near Future, is shown to have them in full force.
• Mass Effect:
  • People can become "biotics" through in-utero exposure to dust-form element zero and an implanted biotic amplifier, granting them the ability to naturally generate mass effect fields. Only about ten percent of exposures are successful; thirty percent get terminal cancer while the remaining sixty percent are completely unaffected but sometimes gain biotics from being exposed a second time. It is thus, technically, not an example of Psychic Powers (as merely Unobtainium implanted within a living body) but narratively it's telekinesis for all intents and purposes.
  • The asari are the oldest spacefaring species that's still around and they're all biotic. Tali idly wonders whether the other species will be the same way in a few thousand years. It turns out that this is the result of years of genetic engineering at the hands of the Precursors.
• Psionic abilities are a researchable technology in the Master of Orion games. May be this and Telepathic Spacemen, though, as it's available to all races, not just humans.
• Subverted in Otherspace, in which the human-derived Laters are often immune to psionics, and a few can actually negate nearby psionic activity.
• Rimworld: The Royalty expansion includes psionic powers, usually seen among the various Empires' nobility; being highly technologically advanced, they use a device to "connect" the person to the psychic network, with further applications boosting their psychic capacity. The potential is there from the beginning, however, because there is a "natural" way to achieve this same "connection" through rituals with the psychic Anima Tree once it has developed; thus, humans both tribal and spacefaring can wield psyonics against their foes.
• Scarlet Nexus takes place on a future Earth where humans developed Psychic Powers thanks to a psionic hormone. These psionics are the last line of defense against the Others, otherworldly foes that can't be killed by conventional means. Interestingly, psionic technology appears to have developed in place of digital technology, granting everyone Augmented Reality that is beamed directly into their brains.
• One of the three playable factions in Sins of a Solar Empire are the Advent, an offshoot of humanity that possesses psychic powers.
• Hinted at in the Sonic the Hedgehog series with Silver the Hedgehog, who is from 200 years in the future, and has psychic powers for no other adequately explained reason. Likewise, his friend Blaze has pyrokinesis.
• In Star Control, there is mention of esper ratings on human members of the crew.
• StarCraft:
  • The frequency and potency of human psychics is supposed to be greater in the future (than the current 0) and an impending commonality of psychic abilities in humans is why the Zerg want to assimilate them before taking on the Protoss, or to somehow free themselves from the Dark Voice.
  • In Legacy of the Void, it turns out that humanity has the potential to become the "Purity of Form" half of the next generation of Xel'naga without Amon's interference, like the Protoss had. And Kerrigan, a Zerg (the race with Purity of Essence)-infested human, becomes the newest Xel'naga.
• Stellaris has an option to eventually develop a psychic technology for your species, human or otherwise.

• In Sword of the Stars 2, psionics are a technology path that all the races (including humans) have a chance of being able to research. Liir and Zuul (who had psionics with no game effect in the first game) generally have the highest probability while Tarka have the lowest, unless the power is related to combat or diplomacy in which case the Liir and Zuul, respectively, have extremely low chances.
• Researching human capability for psionic (psychic) capabilities is one of the focuses of X-COM. Aliens that attack have psionic powers that can ruin entire squads with just one psionic attack, and developing countermeasures is a major focus of the game. It can get to the point that you can outright obliterate a UFO full of aliens with just one man sitting in the cargo hold of your transport, simply by psionically taking over enemy aliens, and having them kill each other off, all while you remain unharmed.

Web Originals

• Imperium Nova: Psionics are a sphere that houses can operate in, their main use being counter-espionage. What exactly it entails varies a lot from galaxy to galaxy.
• Metamor City:
  • Psychics started showing up out of nowhere less than a century ago. They are distinct from mages, who have been around practically forever.
  • In the novel Things Unseen, it's mentioned that a team that investigated the Telvari Rift, a region bathed in magical radiation, came back with psi abilities.

Western Animation

• Batman Beyond: There is an organization of people with naturally occurring psychic powers, and Willie Watt's telekinesis is treated in an oddly normal manner, although he wasn't born with it.
• The Simpsons: According to the episode "Holidays of Future Passed", people will be able to read thoughts in the year 2041.

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