Originally published 1956 Genre Science Fiction | Adaptations The Power (1968) | |
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Similar The Dark Beyond the Stars, Science Fiction of the 20th, Pulp Culture: The Art of, Art of imagination, The Glass Inferno | ||
The Power is a 1956 science fiction novel by Frank M. Robinson. It first appeared in the March 1956 edition of Blue Book (magazine) and then in a standalone book published by J. B. Lippincott in May that year. Its protagonist, a researcher named Tanner, discovers evidence of a person with psychic abilities among his coworkers. As he tries to uncover the superhuman, his existence is erased and his associates murdered, until he faces a showdown with an apparently undefeatable opponent.
The novel was made into a Studio One television episode and a 1968 film under the same name.
Reception
Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel as "a harrowing chase that will have you biting your nails." Anthony Boucher found that the novel's logical extrapolation was "not so much absurd as just absent. . . . . there has never been a less credible picture of the next step in evolution"; but he, too, praised Robinson's melodramatic storytelling.