The novel “Psychlone” by Greg Bear was published for the first time in 1979.
Larry Fowler is invited by his old friend Henry Taggart to try to make objective measurements of strange poltergeist phenomena. Fowler is skeptical but he sees really extraordinary phenomena. Some days later, Taggart and his father die in a homicide-suicide case and Fowler thinks there’s a connection with the poltergeist phenomena so he goes back to investigate.
Lorobu is a small town near Albuquerque, New Mexico. One day the inhabitants seem to go crazy and kill each other. Timothy Townshend is one of the few survivors but he’s just a kid and the event was particularly traumatic. He keeps on having strange visions but what do these events have to do with with those witnessed by Larry Fowler? Why do some mediums seem to be attracted to Lorobu?
Greg Bear is known as a hard science fiction writer but occasionally he experimented with other genres. “Psychlone” is fundamentally a horror novel and more specifically a ghost story, a theme which the author interprets in his own way trying to add pseudo-scientific elements.
The story is centered on psychic phenomena so violent as to cause a sort of cyclone and the title derives from the union of the two terms. One of the main characters, Larry Fowler, seeks to understand the nature of the phenomena he witnessed investigating them in a scientific manner.
Unfortunately the attempt to tell a horror story almost turning it into a science fiction one ends up weakening it. In a horror story, supernatural elements obey laws which are totally arbitrary. Often authors use elements from various traditions to be able to develop it without turning it in an attempt to understand the “rules of the game”.
An author can still choose the rules more appropriate to the way in which he wants to develop his story: for instance the fact that in vampires stories sometimes these supernatural creatures can walk in sunlight and sometimes they can’t stand it.
When an author decides to include scientific elements in a story, first of all he must develop it in a rational manner. The supernatural elements can no longer be arbitrary but they must have some kind of explanation.
Sure, an author typically invents a pseudo-scientific explanation that makes more or less sense to the fantastical elements of a story but when he decides to introduce one he must also develop it in a consistent manner. I don’t think everything needs to be explained but there must be some clarity at least in the essential elements.
In my opinion, the biggest problem in “Psychlone” is that Greg Bear outlines a pseudo-scientific explanation for the psychic phenomena at the basis of the novel but he doesn’t really develop it. The base concept of the story is interesting but induces the reader to ask a thousand questions which are given no answer.
A horror story can even be developed with a science fiction approach but for it to work the author must build a coherent theory to explain the apparently supernatural phenomena it talks about. Instead, if science fiction elements are treated as arbitrary like classic horror elements the story doesn’t work as well and this is the case of “Psychlone”.
You can see this weakness particularly in the end of the novel. In a horror story, the weapons to use against supernatural creatures are chosen arbitrarily, again because the rules are arbitrary. However, when pseudo-scientific elements are added, the author must try to introduce some logic. In “Psychlone”, the military build a weapon that is supposed to eliminate the psychic phenomena but even they don’t know if it will work.
Of course, even in a hard science fiction story it’s possible that the authors of an experiment aren’t completely sure about the results. The problem in “Psychlone” is that the arbitrariness of the horror stories rules leads to the impression that the pseudo-scientific elements are thrown in haphazardly.
For the regular reader of horror stories, “Psychlone” isn’t even particularly scary. Unfortunately it’s difficult to ignore the pseudo-scientific elements but if you are not asking questions about their consistency, the novel is decent and smooth. However, in my opinion it’s the kind of reading that can be alright just to spend some time with a novel that has no complexity.
