The bester of both worlds

The Stars My Destination

The Demolished Man

I reread these the other night and was talking about them with a friend today; decided to both write what I said here and dare to inflict a semicolon on folks.

The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are two 50s science fiction novels by Alfred Bester. These, I think, are the best of 50s scifi, although Demolished is more a scifi wrapper around a classic noir novel.

These are both soft science fiction page turners, with Demolished having about 1.5 pages of sci-fi overdescription wankery and Stars having practically none. Their cultural underpinning for gender relations is accurate to the period of writing, so if that sort of thing bothers you in fiction, you will not enjoy this book. I have recommended one or another of these books to a large number of people over the years, and that's the only reason that someone gave as not-liking them other than basic disinterest in the basic genres portrayed. If you can make it through, say, an episode of Mad Men without getting angry, you'll be fine.

These books are solid plot, there is a conflict (mostly based around seeking revenge or retribution of various kinds) and people fight, scheme, and misunderstand in pursuit of these goals. The technology is throwaway to move the plot, and the writing is beautiful.

One of the pleasures of reading these two books is that their themes are widely copied in later SF. This is the real stuff and direct that you may have been served in diluted form later. These books aren't linked in any way, except perhaps typographically, and they stand alone.

They're currently relevant because they deal a lot with corporations, class struggle, and the sort of bleak future that we frequently seem to be settling into nicely. They are, however, good books about bad people and if you're looking for light reading that won't touch on unpleasant topics, this isn't it. Characters in the book plot, kill, steal and commit violence against eachother. If you're good for that, the book's good for you.

I recommend these books whole-heartedly. They're good book for people who enjoy action, noir, and thrillers. They're fast, fast reads of the "can't put down" variety, and good for short days of light. Stars is currently especially thematic because a section of it takes place on new year's eve.

For the last while, I've been including my media consumption and my conversations about same with friends in my journal. In part, this is so I remember what I read. lmk if you find it useful and/or annoying. I'm not linking to wicker pedia because I'm once again frustrated with the great cognitive sink of society after reading some articles on gnosticism.