The Omega Factor: The Revival of Telepathy in the 1970s

Luckhurst attempts to document the resurgence of apparently authoritative claims about the existence of telepathy in the late 1960s and 1970s. He explores the Cold War contexts that prompted both the American and Russian intelligence communities to research psychical powers and to try to develop what they called “psionics,” new kinds of psychical technology or weaponized special powers. At the same time as these allegedly secret programmes, popular culture in the West became saturated with representations of psychic powers, from children’s TV, best-selling horror fiction such as Stephen King, and in film. After an attempt to map this terrain, the author suggests that this upsurge is in part trying to figure new forms of global communication, networked technologies and selves.