Novel: Sunburst

Overview
"Sunburst" unfolds in a near-future world where human evolution has begun to manifest as widespread psychic abilities: telepathy, telekinesis and other mind-based powers that alter everyday life and social relations. Against a backdrop of technological governance and growing suspicion toward the "gifted," Phyllis Gotlieb follows a small band of young people whose lives have been irrevocably transformed by a single catastrophic event. The narrative focuses on their attempt to preserve individuality and intimacy while escaping a state that seeks to contain, regulate or weaponize their capacities.
The story moves between moments of tense external pursuit and quieter, interior scenes that emphasize perception, memory and the ethical questions posed by mental powers. Gotlieb blends speculative imagination with an unsettling portrait of authority and conformity, creating stakes that feel both personal and political. The result is an affecting tale about exile, belonging and the cost of freedom.

Plot and Characters
Calli Dorle is at the story's emotional center: a young woman changed by an accident that left her and several companions gifted with telepathic and telekinetic talents. Calli's relationships with her friends form the novel's core, as they navigate mistrust from outsiders, friction within their group, and the search for places where they can be safe. Each character responds differently to their abilities and the pressures they face, generating conflicts of loyalty, fear and aspiration that drive the plot.
Pursuit by an authoritarian government turns the group into fugitives. Rather than relying on spectacular battles or grandiose set pieces, the novel tracks the ways ordinary choices, whom to trust, whether to reveal or conceal, how to use power, shape survival. Scenes of escape and concealment are intercut with intimate moments that reveal how psychic connection complicates love, jealousy and identity. The friends must continually decide whether to resist assimilation, submit for protection, or reinvent themselves away from surveillance.

Themes and Legacy
At its heart, "Sunburst" probes what it means to be human when the boundaries of mind and body dissolve. Gotlieb treats psychic ability as both liberation and burden: it opens new modes of empathy and control, but also erodes privacy and increases vulnerability to coercion. The tension between community and individuality runs through the narrative, as does a sustained questioning of power, who claims the right to govern minds, and what price is paid when safety is traded for freedom?
Gotlieb's prose often emphasizes interiority and psychological nuance, giving the novel a lyrical, sometimes haunting tone. Feminist concerns, female subjectivity, the politics of intimacy, the social regulation of difference, inform characters' choices and the novel's emotional texture without reducing the work to polemic. As an early contribution to Canadian science fiction, the book helped lay groundwork for later explorations of speculative ethics, queer and feminist SF, and literary approaches to genre. Its combination of tense, character-driven drama and meditative reflection on power continues to resonate for readers interested in how imagined futures interrogate contemporary fears about surveillance, otherness and autonomy.