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I can't recall novel I read probably in late 90'/early 00' in Polish (most likely to be translation of somewhat older work). What I remember:

  • Definitely sci-fi (space travel)
  • Protagonist has some psychic powers. Not sure how unique he is and what exactly is their nature. I believe the powers were called "Psi power", but keep in mind I'm guessing source name from faintly recalled translation.
  • Protagonist (as an adult) arrives at some school where he is very submissively welcomed by a teacher who is afraid of him. I don't recall any other students and don't know their ages. It is likely that school visit was only temporary for the following test.
  • Protagonist participates in a test where he is placed in "psychic chamber" that "makes what he wants" or something. Teacher is very afraid when he prefers the chamber to remain dark instead of light as he thinks it signifies dark personality. Protagonist fleetingly thinks that school's director deserves going to hell. Later it is shown that director was in fact temporarily sent to hell ("The hell flames of planet Xyz"). I believe that going through this test was normal for arriving students, something like aptitude/character exam, not like experiment. But protagonist was quite powerful and for that reason effects were expectedly further reaching than normally
  • Ending scene shows protagonist's male friend creating ball of fire in his hand to intimidate someone
  • At the age when I read it I actually DID judge books by the cover, so it probably had some cool picture ;-)

Can somebody identify it by the scene mentioned?

Laurel
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MateuszL
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  • You could improve this question by going through the checklists here and editing in any relevant info you can think to add. – Valorum Oct 05 '23 at 07:49
  • For example, 'director' is a very specific word to use. Was that what he was actually called? What was the psychic chamber called? Were there any words used to describe his powers? What was the protagonist's name? What was his friend's name? Was there a love interest? What was the rest of the school like? What did the protagonist do between being born and going to this school as an adult? When you say 'adult', do you mean teenaged or older? – Valorum Oct 05 '23 at 07:51
  • @Valorum I added some details, but about names the only one I remember was "psi". keep in mind that I read polish translation, so I would need to guess original names anyway. Director is "the top boss in the school". Adult is most likely actual adult. I don't remember any love interest, but it doesn't mean there weren't any. In any case it definitely didn't feel like young adult novel about love life in magic high school – MateuszL Oct 05 '23 at 08:23
  • While I agree both questions have the same answer, marking them as duplicate seems strange - questions themselves are completely different, describing disjoint parts of the story. – MateuszL Oct 06 '23 at 05:20
  • Think of the duplicate marker as a signpost. Lots of people want to get to the same place starting from different points, so you need more than one signpost, but what you don't need is more than one destination. – Valorum Oct 06 '23 at 06:28

1 Answers1

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This is undoubtedly Frank Herbert’s The Godmakers. The protagonist, Lewis Orne, an agent of the ConSentiency’s Rediscovery & Recontact, discovers in the course of a mission that he is a “psi” and is subsequently summoned to the planet Amel. On Amel, he is required to go through an “ordeal”; this is one of the tests thereof.

If you read it in Polish, you will probably remember the title as Twórcy bogów.

Jeff Zeitlin
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  • If it is this story, the question can be linked to this other question – Jeff Zeitlin Oct 05 '23 at 11:12
  • correct, this is the one. I also remember the scene from other question, though I didn't associate it with the same novel. And it seems that in this case I picked the book due to author's name that I was familiar with and not the picture on the cover :-) – MateuszL Oct 05 '23 at 11:51
  • The Polish edition didn't have a "cool" cover, but at least one American edition had a picture of a dinosaur-like thing (which, contextually, I can say was intended to be a 'shriggar'). – Jeff Zeitlin Oct 05 '23 at 15:25