Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

So in Asimov's autobiography, there's a moment where he hadn't written any SF for ages, just science stuff, and somebody asked him why he didn't write SF any more, and he said "Oh, the field has moved on," and the person (I think it was Judy Lynn Del Rey but I may be misremembering and it doesn't mater) said "You are the field" so he wrote The Gods Themselves and won a Hugo and a Nebula even though it was awful.

But my point is, we are the field.

So, why aren't you writing it? Why aren't I?

I guess I'm not because... it's been done and I haven't thought of anything new to do with it where it feels like it would be an interesting thing, and because it goes some squicky places. One is eugenic superhuman more evolved, like The Chrysalids, which is bothersome. One is Twu Wuv where people understand each other so much better because they read minds, like Spider Robinson. Now I think about it, the two best uses of it seem to me Midnight's Children and Dying Inside. Where could I go from there? And when I think what I could do with that the answer is, fantasy. It's fantasy.

I think possibly when Heinlein wrote Time For The Stars and Campbell was pushing all that psi, it was kind of possible to pretend that it might be something scientific there, but now... no. Nobody believes in it in that way, so it would be fantasy. And it is fantasy by that definition that says it's stuff done by the will because somebody is special. And saying "psi" makes it feel not like science put like pseudo-science, and I'd rather have magic than pseudoscience any day.

Having said all that, I have seen some interesting uses of psychic powers in romance -- not where it is the focus, that has almost always been AWFUL (even from writers I like when they're writing about Ohio) but for instance there's a lovely background thing in Lani Diane Rich's The Fortune Quilt where the heroine is sent to interview a woman who makes magic quilts, and the woman is a bit like Elise, except quilts, and when you buy your quilt she gives you a fortune and it's all specific and vague like "take the cab, give back the frog" and then it all actually comes true.