The Remote Viewing program and Project Stargate really existed. The program was created in 1972, went through different phases and name changes, and was finally declassified in 1995. A detailed account of the development of this project is found in David Morehouse’s book, Remote Viewing (Sounds True, 2008).
Tessa’s description of the remote viewing process in Chapter 1 is quite accurate:
“Remote viewing is good, but it’s kind of solitary, and, frankly, boring. You sit in a room, and you try to see what is happening at a certain location—say, a Russian atomic reactor—and images pop up in your head. You sketch them, and you write down anything else that occurs to you, without really knowing what it all means.”
The outcome of a typical remote viewing session would look pretty much like this:
The Remote Viewing program may have found inspiration in a 1916 book titled Clairvoyance and Occult Powers, by Swami Panchadasi:
The relevant chapter is “Lesson X”:
The lesson goes on to say that, of course, Capt. Yount and his men rushed to the rescue, and when they reached the place of his dream, “they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive.”
The book provides more tales of “remote viewing,” which to us modern people come across a bit naïve and make us wonder whether we should take the book seriously at all. Those who initiated the Remote Viewing Program, however, obviously thought the subject worth exploring and given the money, years, and efforts spent on this program, it cannot be easily discounted as total nonsense, regardless of its apparently negligible practical value.
Mind reading is a different story. The fascination with mind reading / telepathy has a history going back for centuries. Unfortunately, most reports of telepathic events are anecdotal at best and their credibility is low, even though some of those reports were generated by serious scientists. One of the earlier books on the subject (that was immediately ridiculed by the medical profession) was Mind Reading and Beyond, by William A. Hovey, published in 1885.
However, the skepticism with which Hovey’s book was received didn’t deter others from pursuing the subject. In 1909 James Coates published SEEING THE INVISIBLE, (Fowler):
The book has an interesting chapter on “Thought-Transference and Telepathy” (Chapter VIII). Coates states that “it is the intense emotional thoughts which are transferred and received,” which is the motif of many accounts of telepathic events (as Doctor Alexander points out to Tessa in Chapter 2).
There is little doubt that both remote viewing and telepathy are fascinating subjects that are great fodder for fantasy. I have added these notes here, so you know that, maybe, not everything in Tessa’s story is necessarily the fruit of fantasy.