This mildly controversial and frequently misrepresented technique of Psychology – also known in its early days as mesmerism – is generally depicted in sf as very much more rapid and reliable than any known medical hypnosis. An extreme case is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (December 1845 American Whig Review), whose titular subject dies but remains conscious even in decay until the hypnotic compulsion is removed. Further examples of nineteenth-century fascination with mesmerism include Grant Allen's Kalee's Shrine (1886; vt The Indian Mystery 1897) with May Cotes, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852), Lord Lytton's The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain (August 1859 Blackwood's Magazine; 1905 chap) and – most famous of all, in its day – George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894), the name of whose mesmerist Svengali entered the English language.
Various characters like Guy Boothby's Dr Nikola and Dr Mabuse in Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) achieve quasi-hypnotic affects through sheer charisma. More typically in sf, hypnosis is elevated to the status of an irresistible Psi Power (which see), as in the partly rationalized but nevertheless impossibly fast-acting hypnotic gestures of Mandrake the Magician. The Shadow is famed for his hypnotic ability to "cloud men's minds" and so walk unseen. Dr D'eath in Roy Meyers's The Man They Couldn't Kill (1944) can actually induce hypnotic trances at a distance. Another hypnotic mind-controller is the eponym of T H White's The Master (1957).
A doctor in Robert A Heinlein's Double Star (February-April 1956 Astounding; 1956) cures the protagonist's racial phobia about Martians in one quick hypnotic session; another, in Jack Vance's Ports of Call (1998), responds to scepticism about his techniques by hypnotically persuading an entire spaceship crew of the social necessity to paint their noses blue before dining. Medical use of hypnosis to recover lost or suppressed memories (> Amnesia; Memory Edit) has been criticized on the basis that doctors motivated to find evidence for child abuse, Reincarnation or UFO experiences – as in The UFO Incident (1975) – may, perhaps inadvertently, implant or reinforce the impressions they seek.
Often nonhumans are credited with hypnotic ability, like the titular Alien in James Corbett's Devil-Man from Mars (1935). A hypnotically powerful ant Hive Mind features in Alfred Gordon Bennett's The Demigods (1939). Eric Frank Russell makes "hypnos" a recognized class of psi-gifted Mutants in Sentinels from Space (November 1951 Startling as "The Star Watchers"; exp 1953; vt Sentinels of Space 1954 dos), and introduces Aliens with the hypnotic power to appear as anything they wish (or not at all) in "Mesmerica" (in Men, Martians and Machines, coll of linked stories 1955). Further examples abound.
Mechanical hypnotic devices also appear regularly in sf; examples include the mind-controlling crystals used by the hero of A E van Vogt's Slan (September-December 1940 Astounding; 1946; rev 1951). The same author's The War Against the Rull (stories April 1940-February 1950 Astounding; fixup 1959) features "nerve lines", simple-seeming patterns that force dangerous hypnotic commands upon the viewer (> Basilisks). A more elaborate gadget cinematically implants false memories (> Memory Edit) in Eric Frank Russell's With a Strange Device (June 1956 Famous Detective Stories as "Run, Little Men!"; 1964; vt The Mindwarpers 1965). One of the many functions of the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is that of a hypnotic educator. [DRL]
see also: Advertising; Percy Brebner; Clichés; Dr. M; Identity Exchange; Fritz Lang; Lie Detectors; Looker; Hume Nisbet; Fitz-James O'Brien; Psionics; Peter Redgrove; Andrey Sinyavsky; William Stanley; Subliminal.
Previous versions of this entry