Up the Walls of the World

Up the Walls of the World is a 1978 sf novel by the American Alice Sheldon who wrote under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. It was the 1st novel she published having until then worked & built a reputation only in the field of short stories.
The book explores the possibility that telepathy & other psychic phenomena are real. It sympathetically describes an Earth invasion attempt by beings with telepathic abilities from the planet Tyree. It considers the subject of sentience in different lifeforms inhabiting widely different environments, in computers & in a vast sentient inhabitant of deep space formed of a network of widely spaced nodes. It's her skill to be able to write convicingly of the experience of such beings.
The story takes place in 3 settings which unfold together.
-On Earth, at a US Navy telepathy lab.
-On the planet Tyree, a life-rich gas giant inhabited by intelligent beings resembling manta rays or cuttlefish which ride the air currents of its vast atmosphere.
-In deep space, The Destroyer, an intelligent entity larger than a solar system but only slightly denser than the vacuum of space & composed of countless linked nodes.