Psion

Cat #1

by Joan D. Vinge

A.D. 2417. The future of the galaxy is threatened by multiplanetary corporations. To Cat, an illiterate slum kid whose catlike green eyes brand him as half alien, the destiny of humankind is insignificant. But his uniqueness targets him for a government experiment, and he discovers how to use his telepathic powers in terrifying new ways. As Cat's powers grow stronger they lead him toward brutal confrontations with deadly forces. Can Cat seize his enemies' minds before they possess his?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens

346 pages, Library bound

First published August 28, 1982

About the author

Joan D. Vinge (born Joan Carol Dennison) is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cat, the former street urchin, has gained status. He is now a student, but psychologically, he was seriously injured and lost access to his gift.
No matter, he is requisitioned by authority to ensure the security of a high-ranking personality. To give him back the use of his gift necessary to carry out his new mission, his employer will provide him with powerful drugs.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been procrastinating to stave off reading this series for, like, 5 years? And now I finally have gotten to reading it. And it is as good as expected, maybe even a bit better. Love this.

This is one of the most seriously underrated sci-fi series.

Q:
... poetry was like psi, she said, like thought, a thing that compressed images to essence. (c)

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cat, a street kid, is arrested and given a choice: he can submit to training to develop his latent psychic abilities, or he can be shipped offworld as an indentured laborer. Although he doesn't really believe he could be anything special, Cat chooses to take part in the training, and is swiftly drawn into a world of interplanetary intrigue. Vinge once again shows she can write sweeping science fiction and give it a human element. The "abused teen with psychic abilities" was done many times in the 80s (when this was published) but few did it as well as Vinge.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thing I've noticed as I rerereread this, in the context of years of gaming and gaming theory, is that the protagonist not only makes poor decisions much of the time, but repeatedly fails at standard "heroic" tasks. He makes messes of his relationships. He gets caught every time he runs. He loses every fight. He gets beaten, poisoned, enslaved, mindraped, and emotionally battered at every point throughout the story.

And yet the story remains compelling despite this.

Huh. Interesting.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok. I remember reading Catspaw a long time ago and I really loved it. I will be reading it soon to see if I liked it better than this. Joan Vinge says in the forward that she started writing this character when she was a teenager and finished it as an adult. I think I could see that in this book. I thought I had read it before but now I’m not sure. Anyhow it was enjoyable, I did like the evolution of Cat’s character and I really liked the short story Psiren at the end of the book.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cat has been fending for himself on the streets of Quarro since he was about five years old but his luck runs out when he is picked up in a sweep and sentenced to the telhassium mines. Telhassium is a superheavy element crucial for space drives and found in pure form on a dead star that was inhabited by the humaniform but alien Hydrans. Cat is saved from the mines at the last minute by being drafted into a psi group of assorted telepaths, telekinetics and teleporters, some with multiple skills. During this phase Cat finds out he is part Hydran and a latent strong psion and rebels and finds himself in the mines after all. There he is contacted by the native Hydrans and discovers a psion plot to take over the telhassium mines and rule the whole of human space. The plot hinges on three disparate groups however, who seem blissfully unaware of each others’ motives. Joan D. Vinge’s first novel is entertaining enough but suffers from a problem common to psi tales: it’s hard to keep suspense when all the characters have magical get-out-of-jail-free superpowers. Still, it had its moments.

[Aricia Gavriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Psion for the third time (in twenty years) I find myself wondering if this story was actually intended as a ya novel, or if the publisher made the decision to market it to that readership, specifically because the central character -- Cat -- is a mid/late-teen at the time this story takes place. It doesn’t look like a ya novel to me: it’s dark, downbeat, cruel, with a vein of desperate hopelessness that would have thoroughly depressed me when I was a kid! (It’s like selling The Silver Sword as a children’s book. Perhaps the central character is a young kid, but I remember my mother being horrified when she scanned the copy I brought home from school. Hmm.)

I actually read Psion second in this loose trilogy of Psion - Catspaw - Dreamfall, specifically to get the oft-referred-to backstory of our reluctant hero. One gathered from Catspaw that Cat had been through a number of utterly traumatic experiences, the first of which involved being no more than a tot when he was abandoned to the gutter, because he’s a human-alien half-caste … the other involved being sent to the radioactive mines, where escape is supposedly impossible and one’s life will be as short as it’s brutal.

Not pleasant reading, in fact (which would make me hesitate to give it to a very sensitive younger reader), but the story is extremely well crafted, told without recourse to sex or bad language, as one would actually expect of a story written for a young readership. We follow Cat through a series of misadventures, where he learns that he’s a psion (telepath), and discovers how to use his gift.

Nor is it a happy ending, though Cat obviously survives to fight another day. Psion is a fairly quick read, at something like 75k words, so one doesn’t need to dwell on the darkness too much; and if you do want the full backstory to the best book of the trilogy -- Catspaw -- you need to read this one, no matter how quickly. The second novel, which appeared some years later, justifies the bleakness of this read ... though I’m pretty sure the saga of Cat was not originally planned as a trilogy. Far too many years separate out the installments, and the three books are too radically different, each from the other, to really constitute a trilogy. Three interconnected novels featuring the same character at different points n his turbulent, somewhat tragic life ... not a trilogy.

For Psion, I’d actually give 3.5 stars, if Goodreads would allow it, and recommend it not for young adults at all, but for adult readers who want the backstory to the exceptional novel which Catspaw is.

[Matt Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty clearly a first novel. While Vinge does a pretty decent job with telepaths, their interactions, and the cultural issues between them and non-psi humans, the general world-building is unsatisfying; corporate mercantilism run amok among the stars has been done more thoroughly elsewhere. The plot stumbles its way along to the finish line as if continuity was a chore; perhaps keeping this as a novella might have been better.

Oddly, it's the very imperfect characters that appeal to me. There aren't any easily likeable characters, but no out-and-out execrable souls either; each has a past, a set of bugaboos to deal with, and no one seems to be made of infinite patience or avarice. This can be frustrating to a reader, but it makes the characters believable.

This is serviceable, journeyman SF but a pale representative of the struggling-youth, coming-of-age corner of the market.

[The Captain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ahoy there mateys! I don't know where I heard about this book either.  The version I bought contained the first book and the story "Psiren."  The book follows Cat, an orphan, as he develops his telepathic powers and learns to trust other people.  It is a strange sci-fi that is classified as a young adult book.  I enjoyed the character of Cat very much.  The plot was interesting and the world building felt a bit light.  Cat carries the story because I wanted to know what happened to him.  I did not like the story "Psiren" at all even if I enjoyed reading more about Cat.  I am not sure if I will read the next two books in the series.  Arrr!

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, gritty sci-fi read. Not entirely sure as to it being classified as cyberpunk, but it was enjoyable.

[Hyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this novel.
On the one hand, it is exactly the type of book I love because it reminds me of my adolescence, when I discovered reading in the early 1980s.

There was a period between the 1970s and early 80s, before science fiction went corporate (along with everything else), when sci-fi was still a bit of a niche, subculture genre, and writers were not necessarily compelled to write what the publishers could envision as entire franchisees with mass mainstream appeal. There was still a feeling of pulp fiction spontaneity to the science fiction books of this era. Writers had the freedom to be creative and develop ideas, perhaps not with as much skill as modern writers like James Corey or Alistair Reynolds, but with a lot more freedom and creativity.

In this novel, Ms. Vinge creates a universe that is, well, sketchy at best. I mean, that’s OK, her real interest is somewhere else, but the worldbuilding here is nothing that we haven’t seen before. Humanity has spread out to the stars thanks to the discovery of a kind of blue crystal that can only be mined on an ice planet in a nebula formed by an exploding star. The blue crystals are basically Frank Hebert’s spice (Dune), Samuel R Delaney’s Illyrium (Nova), James Cameron’s Unobtanium (Avatar) and so on.

Her twist on it is that there used to be a humanoid race of aliens called the Hydrans who were once a galaxy spanning civilization, but by now they’ve gone the way of the Neanderthals. They are either extinct or in hiding as humanity expanded across the stars. The remaining alien groups that survive exist in small hidden enclaves that might’ve been inspired by Native American reservations (except these reservations have not been set up by the humans, but by the Hydrans themselves).

The interesting thing about these aliens is that they were communal and have psychic powers. They were in constant communion with each other, and so for them crime, violence, lying, and murder were absolutely unknown. If any of them were ever to use their powers to harm someone, they themselves would suffer the same harm they’re trying to inflict on other others. If one of the aliens were to use their psychic powers to kill, they themselves would be killed as well.

The basic plot of the novel is as follows:

Cat is a street kid, 16 or 17 years old, who has grown up in Old Town, a crime and violence ridden ghetto, which lays in ruins under a much more modern and prosperous city in a planet colonized by the humans. When he is arrested for assault, the authorities are surprised to find out that he is a powerful Psion. In this society “Psions” are considered freaks and are reviled and feared. Psions are humans with psychic abilities that range from telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and so on.

Cat is taken in by Dr. Siebeling to be part of his Psion team that works as corporate security across the galaxy. Siebeling himself is also a Psion, who has dedicated his life to train those with “the gift” to prove themselves useful to society in an effort to try to remove the stigma from Psions.

So so this is basically Doctor X and his mutant Academy.

Again, this is not a criticism. Absolutely standard in Science Fiction to use established tropes to create a structure a foundation for the story you’re actually trying to tell. I guess my issue with the novel is that whenever the author is interested, she can l write beautifully, and can convey complex information in a skillful and elegant way… But every once in a while, when she’s trying to get a plot point across that is necessary for the story, but she’s not all that interested in, she just seems to pencil it in and drop it on you in an obvious and tedious information dump. Clearly, she can weave the backstory into the narrative in an unobtrusive way whenever she has a mind to do it, but half the time she seems to just rush through it so she can get back to what she’s really interested in.

And what she’s interested in, it seems to me, is how characters deal with trauma. There are three characters, Cat, Doctor Sibelius, and a telepath girl called Jewel, locked in a love triangle. Each of them is dealing with their own traumatic past, and are being held back by their own trauma. Cat is an extraordinarily powerful Psion, but isn’t even aware of his psychic powers because he has built impenetrable barriers to shield himself from his psychic abilities, and from the traumatic and violent death of his mother at a very young age. As a consequence, he does not have access to these powers until Dr. Sibelius and his team train him to use them.

Doctor Sibelius has an irrational hostility towards Cat, because subconsciously Cat reminds him of his wife, whom he was unable to save from being murdered for being a Psion and a Hydran. He also has a son who has half alien and half human, who would be around the same age as Cat. When the doctor‘s wife was murdered, the son went missing, never to be heard from again. Sibelius blames himself for all of this, and it’s taking out all of his hostility on Cat, whose very existence reminds him of his painful past.

Jewel is a rich kid, heiress to a vast corporate fortune… that is until her family realized that she was a Psion, and she was shipped off to Dr. Sebelius’s team. In this society, children with psychic abilities are seen pretty much the way relatives with Down’s Syndrome were perceived in the 19th century. Something to be ashamed of and hidden from society. This has burdened Jewel with tremendous feelings of shame and guilt.

I get the impression that the dynamics between these three characters, and the way each of them struggles to deal with and overcome their trauma are the driving engine of the story and the main interest for the author.

This all seems like a perfectly decent theme to build a novel around.

There’s also an evil Psion called Ruby, who pretty much plays the role of Magneto in the X-Men. He uses his tremendous psychic powers for evil, as a mercenary, renting himself out to the highest corporate bidder, but secretly his ambition is to overthrow the rule of the dead heads (a derogatory term for humans with no psychic abilities), and establish the dominion of the superior Psions. So yeah, basically Magneto.

Ruby has been infiltrating his own Psion operatives into the town on the planet where the crystals are mined, but he has no way of getting into the mines himself, which is necessary for his plan to take over control over space travel, and thus the galaxy. For this he needs Cat, whom he has recognized as a powerful Psion, and is attempting to seduce to his side. This has a little bit of the feel of Darth Vader trying to seduce Luke Skywalker to the dark side… except in this case Cat is quite willing to be seduced, since he can tell that he and Ruby have a lot in common. Ruby was also a street urchin who suffered all kinds of abuse and degradation as a kid, and Cat shares his hatred for the deadhead and all the inhuman abuse he has been forced to endure.

Much of the drama in the novel hinges around Cats ambivalence whether to side with Dr. Siebrling in helping the humans, or Ruby and his promises of wealth and power. In the end, it seems like Jewel will be the deciding factor. Will Cat betray Jewel and Dr. Sibelius, or will he side with a society that despises him and his kind?

All of this is well and good in principle, and sounds like a perfectly decent premise for a novel. Samuel R Delaney could’ve done wonders with this. Unfortunately “wonders“ is not exactly how I would describe what this author does with these ideas.

The protagonist, Cat, is one dimensional and underdeveloped. His entire repertoire of action seems to consist in having tantrums and being disrespectful and obnoxious. We are given enough material to explain his motivations and behavior, but the problem is that no one seems to have told Ms. Vinge about the principle of “show don’t tell“. We are given Cat’s backstory in an information dump sort of way, but none of his struggles are really incorporated into his inner dialogue, motivations, or his actions. For the most part, he is unpleasant and unlikable, regardless of the explanations the author gives us for his behavior. His reaction to any and every negative human interaction he encounters is to have a tantrum. It gets quite tiresome. At the end of the novel, he finally opens his eyes and realizes that his future is all up to him, he can have a wonderful life or not, depending on whether he decides to make the effort to open up to the universe and embrace forgiveness… but the problem is that this all seems forced. We are at TOLD that this is what happens, but none of it appears to develop organically through the characters actions.

She does better with Dr. Sebelius. Although his story arc is roughly equivalent to that of Cat, she goes much more in depth about his motivations and his past. It also helps that he is not the protagonist, but a secondary character, which makes it more forgivable that he should be developed in a more sketchy way. Still, his story arc is a lot more satisfying.

Finally, we have Jewel, who is tormented, contradictory, and her motivations are often not entirely clear… but this is what you would expect from a tormented character. She seems to be emotionally and romantically attached to both Sibelius and Cat, something which is not clearly explained, but I think this is fine. The girls is a mess, it’s totally in character that she should be acting this way. Even though her tormented, goth girl nature is not really given that much expression, she fills the role well enough.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I feel there’s nothing wrong with the basic concept or structure of this novel, but the execution does feel kind of hit and miss. Samuel R Delaney could’ve definitely made this work. Although I am not a big fan of Delaney‘s fascination with stream of consciousness writing, he is excellent at giving us a psychological and emotional x-ray of his characters. His character development is insightful and fascinating. His world building is also wonderful, he manages to use well known science fiction tropes and clichés, and turn them into something original and creative.

I realize it’s unfair to compare Ms. Vinge to one of the masters of the genre, I’m just trying to make a point here. The novel works well enough, but could’ve been much better.

The reason why I enjoyed this book, in spite of its shortcomings is absolutely because of my own personal attachment to the genre of this specific time period. In spite of its shortcomings, I actually enjoyed the story, but I can completely understand why other people would find it lacking.

[Mely · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024 reread.

[Monique Atgood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished re-reading this book for I think my 10th time. It hasn't lost it's flavor over the years, and I enjoy it more each time I pick it up - sorta like going back for your favorite flavor of ice cream time and again, providing much the same enjoyment that a good vanilla/strawberry fix provides.

SYNOPSIS:
Psion is about a street kid who is half alien. His alien half provided him with the ability to read minds, but he is helpless to use the talent. Some trauma so deeply hurt him that he is incapable of using his psychic abilities. Cat is taken to this institute where government agents try to put humpty back together and 'fix' his mind reading abilities. He befriends a fellow mind reader Dere and falls for a sweet girl Jule, a teleport who is the only person who believes Cat is not worthless. Jule believes Cat can help the government mind readers stop an infamous terrorist/mind reader/teleporter/telekenesis multi-talented 'Quicksilver' from taking over the FTA mines.

Cat gets kicked out of the institute and sold into a slavery into the very mines that Quicksilver wants to overtake. The Cinder mines are haunted by an alien race of teleporting mind reading Hydrans. Cat is half Hydran and quickly becomes their 'key' to ending the humans reign on Cinder. Hydrans are helpless and cannot hurt or kill anyone without feeling the effects mirrored back at them.

Cat is essentially a spy in a nest of mind readers, so he walks a fine and frighting line, as he and his small group try to thwart Quicksilver and his revolutionaries.

What I love about it:
The characters are portrayed in such a complex manner. The book is in first person format and you know and feel everything Cat does, the good the bad and the ugly.

It is a timeless book that has drawn me back time and again for the pure enjoyment of entering Cat's heart in his harsh and heoric world.

Negatives:
I still want to know if Seibling is Cat's father. That question is never answered in any of the Cat books. Ever hear of DNA tests?

SPOILER:
The final confronation scene on Cinder is confusing. The knowledge that Seibling forces Cat through a 3 way joining to kill isn't obvious from the scene. The recap helps the reader to understand exactly what happened.

This book is on my top 10 sci-fi books of all time. I love it. 'nough said.

[egelantier · Rating 3 out of 5]

cat, a half-breed kid trying to survive in the slums of big galactic city, tries to escape the forced labor press-gang, finds out he has a latent telepathic talent and ends up in a middle of a deadly game between greedy, corrupt human government and a psychopathic rebellious telepath. it doesn't end well for him or, frankly, everybody, but cat sure tries his best.

i don't think me and vinge are a good match - i remember vaguely liking her snow queen homage a while back, but the way this book went? no. it's pretty straightforward soft sci-fi centered on an outcast hero, xenophobia and trying to find some applicable ethics in a setting where pretty much everybody is a hopeless asshole, and, well. there was nobody in there, except maybe cat, for me to like, and neither the writing nor the setting were especially good for me to settle for the book as a grimy but fascinating thought experiment.

cat is tenacious, lonely and hurting, but there's nobody there for him to reach out for. the "good" side ranges from vaguely kind but absolutely inactive (see: jule taming, resident empath, and if she'd be any more inert she'd stop breathing) to actively assholish yet repeatedly exonerated by narartive (see: dr. siebeling, who repeatedly sabotages and betrays cat, and honestly, all i can do there is to quote rocket the raccoon: boo hoo, my wife and child are dead! everybody dies, and tell him to grow a fucking conscience). cat picks one bad side against the other, citing tenuous human connections and whatnot, but all that i, as a reader, took out of this book is that i'd like to erase this entire setting with a fire and start it over.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was a tiny thing. I can't remember how old exactly, but probably around the time I was fourteen? I remember buying the second sequel, Dreamfall, when it was new in hardcover, and I'd have been around 16 then.

Anyway, though it had been many years since I read this book, I remembered it and its sequel Catspaw with great affection. So, I re-read it (in May 2010, approximately). And I didn't quite like it, but at the same time I didn't quite feel able to be articulate about it.

So, it's now July 2010, and I have re-read it. Now that I'm past the frantic nostalgic urge to get re-acquainted with this character and his story, I can look at things a little more dispassionately. I think that some of the settings and events don't necessarily work well with Vinge's style. The book feels a little rough, but it's a decent introduction to the character and the universe.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll just come straight out of the gate saying that Psion feels twice as long as it needs to be. It has great ideas, good characters, and a fun setting. The themes that peak through aren't groundbreaking but well executed. For a Young Adult novel.

It also suffers from being Young Adult, as those books are primarily made as a power fantasy rather than an exploration of character or themes. Another thing that bothered me was that the villain of this piece was queer coded cause this was written in the early '80s and being "gay" was the same as "scary."

In total, I'd say this book is a fine Young Adult book and that I'm hoping for more maturity in future works. Despite my immense disappointment that a series called "Cat" is actually not about an actual cat.

[allyspock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this book at random from a lending library mailbox in my neighborhood and honestly I only grabbed it because the cover felt so nostalgic and old school sci-fi, but I was so charmed by this book! Yes it’s a bit rife with sci-fi tropes, but they’re done so well that I hardly noticed. Coming at things from Cat’s POV was surprisingly free of too much wallowing, and instead we get this refreshing and unique perspective that’s honestly so interesting. This book was so enjoyable and I’m really looking forward to reading the next!

[William Hillson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I read the first book in the series fist, this book did wonders when I found it and soaked it up like a sponge. I read it when I was 18 and, nearly a decade later, I still think about it most days of the week. I saw this whole series as more than just a casual plot but it helped shape how I view people as a whole. It woke up a lifetime passion for Science Fiction. I highly recommend this series.

[Scottsdale Public Library]

Homeless, illiterate Cat makes an engaging and unlikely hero in this futuristic tale of psychic powers, aliens and grimy underworlds. Cat is half human, half alien and wholly ostracized for both his genetics and his lifestyle until it turns out he has powers that everyone wants to use. Great start to an interesting series. -- Rebekka

[blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too, too many things working against this for me to like it very much. But it may be for you, so read on.

There must be, I now realize, a group of people who are just really into thinking and thoughts and meaningfulness. I thought it was just literary critics, but I think this book was (is?) popular so there must be a group of people out there who just love having the tortured, poor reasoning of a human(ish) being spelled out for them in lieu of any actual actions by characters.

Such "classics" as Lady Chatterly's Lover, most of the iconic Boomer stuff I've read (like The Catcher in the Rye or Fear of Flying) even up to the execrable Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West which turns a beloved fairy tale into an endless psychotherapy session—all seem to be predicated on the notion that what one thinks, especially when one endlessly thinks about something, has a bearing on what one does. This assumes facts not in evidence about human beings, frankly.

So, this is a book about thinking, taken to the extreme of incorporating psionics (with some very, very dubious rules) in order to generate some sort of plot where the hero must do a lot of thinking as to whether to preserve a corrupt and genocidal slavery-based society. It feels like a 350 page intro to an X-Men story, sorta.

Let's see if I can sum this the plot, which I'll obscure in case you care: Guy gets taken from slum to Professor X's institute, guy meets girl and nemesis who is girl's boyfriend, guy gets kicked out and sent to mine, guy meets rebel and alien race who both want mine, guy becomes a tool for (in order) alien race, rebel and nemesis, the upshot of which is the slave-state continues. Point being, hero is a pawn in everyone else's game.

Ironically, I ended up feeling like I knew none of the characters, except for some of their neuroses.

I won't dwell on what struck me as dumb about this whole story. Things like: there's telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation...but no tele-vision (clairvoyance, I mean)? Given the whole (vaguely defined) communion between minds, to the point where it becomes hard to tell your own thoughts from someone else, how on earth could it be necessary to physically have been someplace before you can teleport there? (This is THE critical plot point on which the entire story rests.)

If the Big Bad captures the mine, the Federation will fall. How could that possibly work? How on earth would a handful of rebels be able to hold the mine? In any galactic empire, supply chains would be decades long. What were the rebels going to do with the unobtanium? There was no mention of refining, either, but presumably they weren't just shoving rocks into things!

I kept waiting for the story to sweep me up in something bigger, something well thought out, something akin to science fiction, but it never got out of its own head. If it sweeps you up, you may not notice all the things that began to irritate me as the story wore on.

Besides the above details, e.g., the whole mechanism by which psychic battles took place. Who was running what and when was it possible to tell what was going on? Like, if you want such things to create dramatic tension, shouldn't it be clear what is and isn't possible?

Well, hell, it won lots of awards, I guess. So what do I know?

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joan Vinge deserves so much more success than she has received. Snow Queen was good and Summer Queen was somehow even better, though I didn't think at the time Snow Queen could even have a sequel.

Anyway, one of the reasons Vinge is so great (and probably why she hasn't had, like, star wars level success) is that her science fiction adventures foreground the internal world of the characters--they advance before the plot does, and their increased ability to function in society/get over their traumas (or their failure to do so) typically advance the plot, rather than having the plot make change for the characters.

Ms. Vinge paints a compelling picture of a galactic humanity struggling with income inequality, corruption and bigotry, but rather than treating those as "just so stories" she explores how each is propagated by the economic and political structures of society. She then uses this to explore how poverty and toxic masculinity both shape characters and their responses to Extraordinary Events. She can take a very small amount of plot action and twist it into a very lengthy psychological episode for each character, and I find that she strikes the balance between introspection and action far better than anyone other sci fi author (or author generally) I have read.

Super great read!

[Mel McIvor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m counting a 2.5 as a 3 here…feeling generous.

So…I read Catspaw (the second book in this series) before this one, and Vinge clearly learned a LOT about storytelling and character development between these two books. I loved Catspaw…Psion was much rougher.

The story here is really rushed, and the character development almost non existent (which is weird, ‘cause she does both of those things REALLY well in the second one). Many of the characters are shameless placeholders—THIS is the Kind Best Friend/Love Interest; THIS is the Bad Guy; etc. no surprises in who they turn out to be or the choices they make. Don’t expect twists. Almost everyone (except the MC) is a cardboard trope filling an empty slot in your typical adventure tale.

Cat (the MC)—there’s still something I love about him, but MAN does he grow up a lot between this book and the next. Not *during* this book…somewhere after this one ends. (And not during the sequel story Psiren, either.)

I’ll for sure read the third book Vinge has in this series, but not because of this one. Lucky for me, I already know Vinge can do way better.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have known Cat a very long time

I read this book when it first came out and reread it before reading the second and third books in the series and on and off throughout the years. Maybe it appealed to me because I had been that alien that was missing the big story going on around me. Maybe it appealed to me because there was always something I seemed to be missing when people spoke to me. When my son was born on the Autism Spectrum I got my first clue. Throughout the years as my children grew up I came to understand that we who are not neurotypical are in a way alien ourselves because we interpret the world differently than neurotypicals do.

I just picked up this book again after not having read it for a long, long time and after having lived into my seventh decade. I wish I had known that I would find enough friends and family like myself that I wouldn’t always be an alien when I first picked it up. Well, now I know why I’ve been a scifi and fantasy fan since the 1960s. Thanks to all the authors who helped me keep my sanity when I thought I was the only one who saw the world as I do.

[Jeffrey]

A strange reading experience. I knew going in that this book was going to be pretty "light" and it indeed was. One can imagine, however the various hard sci-fi versions of this story. Think about how Ted Chiang might write this. Telepathy raises inherent challenges for any spy. How do you double cross someone when they can read your mind? The book handles it loosely by, basically, just making Cat a more powerful telepath and doing hand wavy stuff about intentionally thinking lies. But we get hints of a Chiang-ian solution in the scene where that one character (can't remember their name) is found out to be a corporate spy. Rather than allow their mind to be read, they goad their antagonist into killing them right away. Hardening up the hand wavy parts is interesting to think about as well.

The other surprise to me was about the plot. Through the first quarter of the book, the apparent plot kept changing over and over. It was rags to riches then boot camp then spy thriller then prison break before settling back into the central spy novel line. Again one imagines the alternative novels that could have been written fleshing out those other plot skeletons.

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea at its heart (psychics all need hella trauma therapy) is pretty interesting, but then it's cluttered up with much too much unrelated plot. Cat is a remarkably passive character, too: I thought he'd finally made a decision of his own in the fight scene at the end, but no, he was actually manipulated into that too. wtf, seriously.

Another very strange decision was to let the question of whether Cat is related to another character just... go unanswered. The only way I can read it is that they both know it's true and really don't want to admit it to themselves? It makes the love triangle something out of a psychoanalytic fever dream. That has to be intentional?! But if it is, why did Vinge let her Freud-in-space crack!fic get so sidetracked with all this nonsense about heists?

Villain is a sinister bisexual sociopath and flirts briefly with the hero while monologuing, so far so 1982. Cat is *such* a twink stereotype however (literally a catboy rentboy) that his shock and horror at being desired by a man and massive crush on a lady are both jarring.

Come to think of it, the vibe Cat gives off is quite Vanyel. "Oh dear, I just keep getting beaten up, but in a sexy vulnerable subby way." Is there a name for this genre when it's published as a mass market paperback and not as hurt/comfort slashfic? (Vanyel comes 7 years later and turned up to 11, so it's not a completely fair comparison.)

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having never read Vinge's work, I dived in this with few expectations other than a vague understanding that it might have been considered YA literature at one point, and also that it might have been a novel revisited by Vinge at various points in her life.

Reading Psion reveals some fissures, that's for sure. The tone is defiantly juveline, but the themes approach maturity rapidly and with a hell of a learning curve. The story itself is by turns revelatory, mysterious, and action-oriented, but it is certainly not transparent nor delineated with clear direction. I actually didn't mind the occasional muddle and enjoyed the whole, but I can't say that my page by page experience was wonderful.

If I had read this when I was younger, I think I would have very much enjoyed it.

[James]

When first published, readers young and old eagerly devoured the tale of a street-hardened survivor named Cat, a half-human, half-alien orphan telepath. Named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Cat's story has been continued by Hugo-award winning and international best-selling author Joan D. Vinge with the very popular Catspaw and Dreamfall. Now, 25 years later, this special anniversary edition of Psion contains a new introduction by the author and "Psiren," a story never before included in any trade edition of Psion. This tough, gritty tale of an outsider whose only chance for redemption is as an undercover agent for an interstellar government that by turns punishes and helps him, is as fresh and powerful today as it was in 1982.

[Maria Carmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting novel, and what a pity that I do not have it's two next books! I remembered that it had been interesting to read this book some 30 years ago (lol) but I couldn't remember the details any more. One of the things that I found fascinating (hope it will not be prophetic) is that the action occurs during a time (2417) when independent states have been replaced by multinational business corporations (does it not sound familiar??) and Humans have colonized and exploited other planets and civilizations to the point of ruining those also!

Cat is an amazing character and Jule and Siebeling, Joralemann and Dere as well. Loved this book!

Maria Carmo,

Lisbon, 23 April 2018.

[R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I grabbed this up because I wanted to read up more on psionics in fantasy and science fiction and this book continually comes up on reading lists on the subject. I can't say that I was particularly impressed with this though. I would not recommend it and I'm hoping there's some better things out there on the same lists.

Some people might really enjoy this, but it seemed a bit hokey and not up to the regular standard that I want in books. Life is too short to read bad books, but it's also too short to read books that are just okay most of the time as well.

[Lucilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading these series based on cool retro cover art without knowing anything about them. To my surprise, the main character, Cat, resembled a bit my own characters in my books - half human and half alien with special powers. This was a good introduction to the character and the world and came with a novella, Psiren, which I really liked. The plotting was not entirely solid and the endless bad luck Cat had was at times very melodramatic.