Qual foi a primeira história com um ser psíquico incapaz de controlar seus próprios poderes e destruir seus arredores com eles?

Na história Obstinado tio Otis (Julho 1941), por Robert Arthur, o homônimo Otis Morks é um teimoso agricultor de Vermont atingido por um raio. Isso concede a ele o poder de que, sempre que ele afirma que uma coisa não existe, ela se torna instantaneamente:

Uncle Otis obstinately would never believe that anyone would erect a statue to Ogilby, and had never admitted that the deed would be done — that there actually was such a statue in the village square. But there had been, and it had been a massive thing. Nonetheless it was gone now.

Um morador descreve como aconteceu:

“‘What statue’ he wanted to know, his eyebrows bristlin’. ‘There ain’t no such thing as a statue to a blubbery-mouthed nincompoop like Ogilby in this town!’
“So, though I knowed it wasn’t any use … anyway I turned around to point at it. And dad blast if it weren’t gone.”

As coisas pioram:

“Everybody’s crazy these days,” [Otis] declared. “Piece here about President Roosevelt. Not Teddy Roosevelt, but somebody called Franklin. Everybody knows perfectly well there's no such a president as Franklin Roo—”
“Uncle Otis!” I cried out wildly. “Look, there's a mouse!”
…
“Where?” he demanded. “No mouse I can see!”
… As soon as he had spoken, of course, the mouse was gone.

Os outros personagens estão aterrorizados. Ele pode desaparecer a barragem local ou:

“Murchison!” she gasped. “Quick! Go out with him! We mustn't leave him alone. Only last week he decided that there aren't any such things as stars!”

Eventualmente, Otis, que também tem amnésia por causa do raio, não acredita em si mesmo, e esse é o fim da história.

1952: "Hoje à noite o céu cairá!", uma novela de Daniel F. Galouye; publicado pela primeira vez em Imaginação, Maio 1952, disponível no Internet Archive.

Dezenove anos antes The Lathe of Heaven, outra história de um personagem com poderes descontrolados de destruição da realidade. Tarl Brent não tem conhecimento de seu poder, mas ele acha que está sendo seguido. Ele é. Alguém descobriu sobre seu poder, e um pequeno exército de agentes do governo foi destacado para vigiá-lo secretamente e garantir que nada aconteça para perturbá-lo e provocar a coisa em seu subconsciente.

Uma reunião na sede:

The fourth man, who hadn't spoken until then, said hesitatingly, "I wonder whether everything would have been all right if we just hadn't tried to verify the supposition — if we'd just taken it for granted that what we suspected was true and hadn't tried to experiment by triggering the initial response?"

T. J. held up a hand protestingly, "Well, that's all in the past now. Too late to do anything. It's true — it was our test that resulted in the 'unexplained' disappearance of the planet Mercury. We know the planet didn't fall into the Sun while at apogee. We know it was just dematerialized . . . But, we learned beyond a doubt what was lurking in the back of Brent's subconscious."

[. . . .]

"I was saying," the man on the director's right spoke, "that something must have been miscalculated . . . Unprovoked responses have cropped up almost periodically since we started this project — expressly to prevent such responses! True, we had hoped there would be only the initial response. But others followed. And now, they're getting closer together . . . T tell you, that thing is stirring! What about the disappearance of the common cold a year ago? — "

"Why, that was . . ." T. J. broke in.

"And there’s the matter of the newly established distance of the Earth from the Sun," the agent ignored the interruption. "And the unanticipated discovery of three elements that defy assignment to the periodic table. The disproof of Avogardo's Hypothesis . . . That's too many milestones at once. I tell you the thing is stirring!"

Enquanto o mundo está desmoronando, o motorista e a namorada de Tarl, os dois agentes, explicam a ele:

He sat erect again. Nothing was making sense to him. Nothing at all. He wanted to pinch himself to see whether he was not in some fantastic dreamland . . . But a glance outside at the eerie panorama of destruction served the same purpose.

"Tarl," Charles continued. "That thing—that intellect within you—is the only thing that really exists. Nothing else exists. Not even space. Not even time. Not even matter. Only that intellect—that intangible, bodiless power of reasoning—is real! That and that alone is the universe—the entire universe. All that is, exists only by virtue of its imagination!"

Tarl was staring dully ahead again. He shook his head. "I don't understand. I can't grasp it. I must be going crazy!"

The lurking quiet outside still flaunted its imponderable threat and the sky was lighted by the fires which were spreading through the city.

"Our directors," Marcella got control of herself, "believe the entire universe, even you and your active mind, is but part of the thought pattern of this—this intellect. They believe this entity, over an indefinite period, created everything as we know it now—in an act that was motivated by loneliness . . .

"Possibly it created you first, or one of your ancestors. If it was you first, then it not only created everything as we know it, but it also created a history for the universe and a racial and individual memory for every creature in it.

"If it created one of your ancestors first, then the intellect progressed down the line of descendants until its host body is now you.

"After creation, it enjoyed its universe and its world awhile, then lapsed into a state of suspended mental activity. It relegated to its subconscious the task of controlling all the objects and actions of all the beings in its universe."

[. . . .]

"But is it awakening? What's causing it to stir?"

"Over-caution," Charles shrugged.

"The directors have been stepping on one another's heels," the girl said rapidly. "The suspicion you felt seeped through into your subconscious—into the subconscious of the intellect. The thing was prodded, stung. Not one time, but several times. Each time it was disturbed, an impulse from its subconscious got through into the order it was sustaining. And each time chaos resulted. Finally, they have almost, if not entirely, awakened it."

"And?" He tried to pull the words from the girl's mouth.

But it was Charles who broke the silence. "And this is it! This is the end!"

Provavelmente não o primeiro de longe, mas algo para fazer a bola rolar.

1971: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. Uma versão foi publicada como uma série de duas partes no Incrível ficção científica para March e Mai do 1971 (links para o Internet Archive).

De Wikipedia resumo:

The book is set in Portland, Oregon, in the year 2002. Portland has three million inhabitants and continuous rain. It is deprived enough for the poorer inhabitants to have kwashiorkor, or protein deprivation. The culture is much the same as the 1970s in the United States, though impoverished. There is also a massive war in the Middle East, with Egypt and Israel allied against Iran. Global warming has wrought havoc upon the quality of life everywhere.

George Orr, a draftsman, has long been abusing drugs to prevent himself from having "effective" dreams, which change reality. After having one of these dreams, the new reality is the only reality for everyone else, but George retains memory of the previous reality. Under threat of being placed in an asylum, Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse.

George begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber. Orr claims that he has the power to dream "effectively" and Haber, gradually coming to believe it, seeks to use George's power to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine, nicknamed the Augmentor, enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternative worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises: When Haber directs George to dream a world without racism, the skin of everyone on the planet becomes a uniform light gray. An attempt to solve the problem of overpopulation proves disastrous when George dreams a devastating plague which wipes out much of humanity and gives the current world a population of one billion rather than seven billion. George attempts to dream into existence "peace on Earth" – resulting in an alien invasion of the Moon which unites all the nations of Earth against the threat.

Each effective dream gives Haber more wealth and status, until he is effectively ruler of the world. Orr's economic status also improves, but he is unhappy with Haber's meddling and just wants to let things be. Increasingly frightened by Haber's lust for power and delusions of Godhood, Orr seeks out a lawyer named Heather Lelache to represent him against Haber. Heather is present at one therapeutic session, and comes to understand George's situation. He falls in love with Heather, and even marries her in one reality; however, he is unsuccessful in getting out of therapy.

George tells Heather that the "real world" had been destroyed in a nuclear war in April 1998. George dreamed it back into existence as he lay dying in the ruins. He doubts the reality of what now exists, hence his fear of Haber's efforts to improve it.

Eu não tinha certeza de que a história do tio Otis contaria como resposta à sua pergunta, pois me pareceu que o tio Otis usava seu poder de uma maneira controlada e propositada (se não perturbada). De qualquer forma, "Obstinado tio Otis" foi publicado pela primeira vez no Julho 19, 1941 questão da carraca. Aqui está uma história bastante semelhante publicada cinco meses antes:

Fevereiro 1941: "O Egoísta Supremo", uma novela de Theodore Sturgeon, publicado originalmente (sob o nome E. Hunter Waldo) em Ficção de fantasia desconhecida, Fevereiro 1941, disponível no Internet Archive.

O narrador é um solipsista. Um dia a passear com a namorada

"Let me put it this way," I spouted. "The world and the universe are strictly as I see them. I see no fallacy in the supposition that if I disbelieve in any given object, theory, or principle, it does not exist."

"You've never seen Siam, darling," said Judith. "Does that mean that Siam does not exist?" She was not disagreeing with me, but she knew how to keep me talking. That was all right because we enjoyed hearing me talk.

"Oh, Siam can exist if it wants," I said generously, "providing I have no reason to doubt its existence."

ele está provado certo:

"Your reasoning is typically feminine," I told her. "Spectacular but highly inaccurate. My point is this." I ignored her moans. "Since I am the creator of all this" — I made an inclusive gesture — "I can also be its destroyer. A case in point — we'll take that noble old spruce over there. I don't believe in it. It does not exist. It is but another figment of my imagination, but it is one without a rational explanation. I do not see it any more because it is not there. It could not be there. It's a physical and psychic impossibility. It — " At last I yielded to her persistent yanking on my elbow.

"Woodie," she gasped. "It's gone! Th-that tree! It's . . . oh, Woodie! I'm scared! What happened?"

"Well, of course it's — " My lips flapped helplessly a couple of times. Then, "It's what?"

She pointed wordlessly at the new clearing in the copse.

"I dunno. I — " I wet my lips and tried again. "My God," I said very quietly."Oh, my God." I was shaking and stone-cold in the hot sun, and my throat was tight. Judith had bruised my arm with her nails; I felt it sharply when she let me go and stood back from me. It wasn't the disappearance of a thousand board feet of good spruce that bothered me particularly. After all, it wasn't my tree! But — oh, my God!

Depois de mais algumas demonstrações de seu poder, ele horroriza Judith ao acabar com uma pessoa chamada Drip:

"Woodie, you’re impossible!"

"Could be. Could be. I've found a lot of things impossible in the last couple of days. They don't exist any more. Drip, for instance."

"Drip? What happened?"

I told her. She began putting on her hat.

"Wait," I said. "I haven’t finished my coffee."

"Do you realize what you’re telling me?" she whispered, leaning over the table. "That was murder, Woodie. You murdered that boy!"

Depois que Judith o deixa, ele fica bêbado e perde o controle:

One drink and I felt better. Two, much better. Three, I was back where I started from. Four, I started getting dismal. Seven, I was definitely morbid. Great stuff. Far as I was concerned, the woes of the world were in a bottomless bottle, and it was my duty and desire to empty the bottle and buy another. Judith was gone, and without Judith there was no sun any more,. and nothing for it to shine on. Everything was over, I said dramatically to myself; and, by God, I'd see that a good job was done of it. I staggered out and leaned against the door post, looking up the street.

"Wake up, Woodie," I quavered, "it's all over now. It's all done. There's nothing left any more, anywhere, anywhere. A life is an improbable louse on a sterile sphere. A man is a monster and a woman is a wraith! I am not a man but a consciousness asleep, and now I wake! Now I wake!" I pushed away from the door post and began screaming, "Wake! Wake!"

Just how it happened I can't say. But things slipped and slid out of existence. There was no violence, and nothing fell. Everything went out of focus and left me alone in an element that was deep and thick and the essence of loneliness. What struck coldly into me was something I saw just before I — went. It was Judith; Judith running down the street toward me with her arms out, and a smile making it tough for the tears to run off her cheeks. She had come back after all, but the thing couldn't be stopped now. My dream was gone!

Woodie acaba como o tio Otis nessa outra história:

"If all things in a universe were but peopling a dream, and if they could not exist when their existence was doubted," I thought, "then is it possible that I myself am a mere figment of my own imagi — "

Certamente 'Forbidden Planet' (1956) deve ser um candidato? Acontece que

the 'monster' is actually the manifestation of Dr Morbius' subconscious.