"Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end..."

[pyat]

Alfred Bester's 1956 SF novel, The Stars My Destination, is the most engaging book I've read this year, perhaps the best piece of fiction I've read in several years. Highly, highly, highly recommended. It ranks with the best John Brunner stuff in terms of frenetic pace and curiously contemporary feel, combined with Theodore Sturgeon's descriptive powers. It could have been written yesterday. I am very sorry I didn't read it as a teenager, 20 years ago, while at the same time I'm pleased that I could discover it now for the first time.

Good grief. If you don't know the book, it tells the story of Gully Foyle, unskilled spacehand. Imagine all the wonderful and terrible things suggested by Roy Batty's dying speech at the end of Bladerunner. Gully Foyle has seen things you people wouldn't believe... and you get to see them, too. Cross Dune with High Colonies and Neuromancer, and maybe a bit of The Fountain. I am becoming incoherent with praise!

Gully Foyle is my name,
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place,
The Stars my destination.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Definitely a gem. Bester wrote some very odd things and some truly excellent ones, and The Stars My Destination is definitely my favorite of his books.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

It's a cool SF story, and had made use of many cyberpunk riffs even before that term was popularized by Gibson some 30 years.

It also underlines just how strong a motivating force that revenge can be, this demonstrated how Foyle catastrophically reacts to being ignored by the Vorga. The them of revenge is similar to the the motivating force driving the hero of The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes; the plot of the latter book was borrowed liberally by Bester.

I've read this a couple of times over the last 10 years, and like you say, it holds up well despite being over a half century old.

::B::

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

It's awesome, but I never really liked the sequel, The Deceivers.

One of my favourite Bester novel is still The Demolished Man, about a telepathic detective trying to solve a murder in a future when mind-reading counts as valid evidence.

Doug.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

The first time I read TDM, near the end I had to abruptly flip back to the start - to confirm I'd made the same error the antagonist had. Very nice twist, that.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

THERE'S A SEQUEL????

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Yes. Ish.

The Deceivers isn't a Gully Foyle book though. Rather it's a completely different story later in the same setting.

I was young when I read it first, and the Tor paperback version made a point of declaring that this was a sequel ... and I was upset to find it wasn't a sequel in a narrative sense. That disappointment has flavoured later adult readings of the book, so when I say "I don't like it as much as his other books" I admit there is an initial bias I can't shake free of.

Doug.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I must do one of my writeups about this book someday. It remains a perennial favorite of mine.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

I've actually had this book recommended to me several years ago, but I have yet to find it. The fact that you review it so highly just makes me wish to redouble my efforts.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's well worth checking out on Amazon, if you can't get it elsewhere.