Better Than His Hugo Award Winning Book

Author's Rating:

Pros: Incredible journey through the mind and future of mankind

Cons: none

The Bottom Line: 
Alfred Bester ranks with the best of the science fiction writers. I just wish he'd written more books.

Author's Review
How can I start? How does one begin to describe an absolute masterpiece without sounding trite or overly enthusiastic? A few epinions back, I reviewed Alfred Bester
blockbuster first novel which won him the first Hugo Award, "The Demolished Man". As I wrote in that review, he certainly deserved that award and others. But as great as
that book was, "The Stars My Destination" is better. Written in 1956, "Stars" surely would have won another Hugo had it not been so near in time to the first one in 1954.

Bester was one of the greatest viewers of the future that I have ever read. I put him in the category of Jules Verne and H.G. Welles. His imagination was unlimited and much of
what he imagined has either happened or has just now been theoretically proven. His style was far ahead of his time, perhaps because he'd been a sci-fi comics writer and
artist. The last thirty or so pages of "Stars" literally gave me goosebumps which is very rare for me outside of music. The story and its presentation is unique in the annals of the literature that I know.

The story starts in 2420 at which time our solar system is in the middle of a war between the Outer System (inhabited moons of the larger planets) and the Inner System which
included Earth, Venus, Mars and our moon. The book was originally entitled "Tiger! Tiger!" for reasons that become obvious as you read the novel.

"Stars" is full of fascinating characters but its main character is Gully Foyle who we first meet as the lone survivor on a spaceship named Nomad. Bester's imagination is not limited to farout theories of the universe but is best shown through the character development of Foyle. Gully is in a horrible predicament as the book begins and he is not too likeable. Lazy, without ambition, he has survived on brute strength.

Foyle is rescued-captured by as roguish a group of space stragglers as you'll ever read about and they proceed to change his life through a painful operation. Gully begins to use his intellect and escapes from the asteroid of his nightmares.

When Foyle was on the Nomad, one ship passed near enough to rescue him but quickly abandoned him. This sets forth a passionate reason for Gully to not only survive but
become intelligent enough to exact revenge on the ship personnel that abandoned him.

The 25th Century has become the logical extension of what is going on right now in the world. Mega-corporations are basically running the world without much care for
anything but the bottom line. That Bester could foresee this in 1956, is further proof of his genius.

I don't really want to go much further into the plot of the book because I want you to discover Bester's world for yourself. As I wrote earlier, Bester envisioned things that are only just now becoming possible. He writes of jaunting as the movement from one place to another without any means of transportation. He writes of accelerated movement that was used so effectively in the recent movie "The Matrix". Many of his characters have the ability to read minds.

But, once again, I want to save my chief praise for the character development of Gully Foyle. From lumbering oaf to superhero, we identify with this man for all seasons and
times. He is Everyman at his worst and best.

What I cannot understand is why Alfred Bester stopped writing novels after these first two masterpieces. Also, and I could be wrong about this, but I can't figure out why no movies have been made from these novels. Of course, Hollywood would probably screw them up and change the meaning and ending of the stories but what classics they've
missed. Bester wrote a number of short stories which are collected in a few volumes and he wrote for television but he never again wrote anything to equal his first two books.

Alfred Bester died in 1987 at the age of 74 but before he died he was honored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America with a Grandmasters Award. He
certainly deserved that award and many more as far as I'm concerned.