I was fourteen or so when I read the Chrysalids. That and Colin Wilson’s “The Mind Parasites” were my two teenage psi/telepath novel signposts/introductions to thinking about such things in a non-magical narrative.

Did you like Iain M Banks “Culture” novels? I assume you’ve read widely in the genre. The Culture is one of the few literary conceits I’d be happy to live in, along with: Wooster’s world, and Jasper fforde’s literary meta fictional world. Austen’s world is too close to the shit and death of the late C18th - no thank you, thank you very much.