Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Date:         Sat, 7 Nov 1992 12:22:02 -0500
From:         "(Seth Gordon)" <sethg@SILVER.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Deafness, telepathy, and speculative fiction

In an earlier post, Omer Zak(?) says he has contemplated writing
an SF story about telepaths, in which non-telepathic people have
problems analogous to deaf people's problems in The Real World.

In 1951, Alfred Bester wrote the award-winning SF novel _The
Demolished Man,_ about a businessman who tries to commit murder
and then conceal it from a telepathic policeman.  In the scene
quoted below, the businessman is talking on the phone to another
telepath, or "Esper":

    "You don't understand.  We're born in the [Esper] Guild.  We live with
    the Guild.  We die in the Guild.  We have the right to elect Guild
    officers, and that's all.  The Guild runs our professional lives....
    We have the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath.  It's called the Esper
    Pledge.  God help any of us if we break it ... as I judge you're
    suggesting I should."

    "Maybe I am," Reich said intently.  "Maybe I'm hinting it could be
    worth your while to break the peeper pledge.  Maybe I'm thinking in
    terms of money ... more than you or any 2nd Class peeper ever sees in
    a lifetime."

    "Forget it, Ben.  Not interested."

    "So you bust your pledge.  What happens?"

    "We're ostracized."

    "That's all?  Is that so awful?  With a fortune in your pocket? Smart
    peepers have broken with the Guild before.  They've been ostracized.
    So what?  Clever-up, Ellery."

    West smiled wryly: "You wouldn't understand, Ben."

    "Make me understand."

    "Those ousted peepers you mention ... like Jerry Church.  They weren't
    so smart.  It's like this ..."  West considered.  "Before surgery
    really got started, there used to be a handicapped group called deaf-
    mutes.... [sic] They communicated by a manual sign language.  That
    meant they couldn't communicate with anybody but deaf-mutes.
    Understand?  They had to live in their own community or they couldn't
    live at all.  A man goes crazy if he can't talk to friends."

    "So?"

    "Some of them started a racket.  They'd tax the more successful deaf-
    mutes for weekly hand-outs.  If the victim refused to pay, they'd
    ostracize him.  The victim always paid.  It was a choice of paying
    or living in solitary until he went mad."

    "You mean you peepers are like deaf-mutes?"

    "No, Ben.  You normals are the deaf-mutes.  If we had to live with
    you alone, we'd go mad.  So leave me alone.  If you're nursing
    something dirty, I don't want to know."

In 1978, John Varley wrote a novelette called "The Persistence of
Vision," about a utopian community populated by deaf-blind people
and their children.  (When a friend of mine told me how wonderful
"TPoV" was, I tried to explain that Varley hadn't done enough
background research on the condition or real deaf-blind people--
he didn't even seem to realize that many of them have residual
sight and hearing.  But my friend got cranky when I tried explaining
that.)
--
seth gordon ... <sethg@silver.lcs.mit.edu>   ... .sig under construction;
mit bs '91  ... learning ctr 4 deaf children ... pardon the inconvenience
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