Welcome to Psi-fi.net. It’s pronounced “sye-fye,” same as sci-fi. The difference is that “psi” (ψ) stands for psychology, the study of the mind, while “fi” (Φ) stands for fiction, same as it does in “sci-fi.”

Psi-fi (ψ-Φ) is psychological fiction that explores human consciousness in a technological context. Psi-fi stories often use a robot or an alien as a contrast character to a human, because “It takes an alien to understand humans.”

Sci-fi is about stretching the boundaries of scientific and engineering ideas but psi-fi is about stretching psychological ideas, in perception, language, dreaming, memory, motivation, imagination, creativity, agency, socialization, empathy, and above all, the mind-body problem: how does the immaterial mind connect to the physical body?

Psi-fi features robots and aliens the way genetic scientists use “knockout mice,” those with a few specific genes disabled or “knocked out” in order to see what those genes do. An android, for example, might be just like a human except lacking in intuition. How would that show up? It’s not about the robot. It’s about human psychology.

Psi-fi sticks relatively close to actual technology and AI concepts with just a little exaggeration. Stories involve no space battles, plasma guns, warp drives, or rampaging robots. Instead, they are stories about the human mind that take place in a context of modern technology.

The site features reviews of psi-fi-like novels as I find them. Some sci-fi from the classic era easily could qualify as psi-fi and some contemporary works as well. I hope readers will advise me on that.

I write posts on psi-fi ideas as they come up — story ideas or angles suggested by what I see and read.  It’s a kind of thinking out loud, but it might help other writers interested in this genre.

As I publish my Psi-fi books, they become available on www.PsiFiBooks.com. See my work there.

Psi-fi is hereby deemed a genre of contemporary literature! Now if only Barnes & Noble agreed with me.