Lucky 13!
The Demolished Man is fun to read. Problem was, I kept wanting to save it and drew the thing out over a month in bits and pieces and kept having to remember what I was up to, blah blah.
Demolished is fascinating for so many reasons, but I'm going to get to Mr Alfred Bester first.
He was born in New York City in 1913. He was raised without any specific religion, although his mother was a Christian Scientist. He went to Law School but dropped out. He was also a member of the Philomathean Society (ooh la la!).
His writing career officially began in 1939 when he won a short story competition (possibly rigged) and then contributed regularly to Astounding Science Fiction (I love the names of the comics back then, so dramatic).
In 1942 he was asked to join DC Comics (oh, things were so easy back then if you were a genius) and in 4 years turned his hand to radio scripts and in 1948 also began to write for television. A few years after, he began writing again.
Bester is most well-known for The Demolished Man and Stars My Destination (or Tiger, Tiger, depending upon which part of the Globe you hang out in). TDM won the first ever Hugo in 1953 (imagine doing that!) for best Sci Fi novel. Although, personally, I think SMD is the better of the two. He wrote a couple of other books as well and adapted a couple of his works for movies.
He died in 1987 from complications from a broken hip. Not long before this, he learned he was going to be honoured with a Grand Master Nebula award in 1988. I think I could die with a smile on my face knowing that.
The man left all his money to a bartender by the name of Joe Sudo. Apparently they were good friends and Bester would stop by each morning. That is brilliant - weirder than anything out of a Sci Fi Story. Makes me think of taking up bartending...
There is more I would like to include about this wondrous gentleman, but I will leave that for another day and another of his books.
The Demolished Man
Written in 1953 and a classic of Sci Fi - for so many reasons.
It's ingenious, especially for being written in 1956. More than than, it still holds up now for about 99 per cent of the book. The only part not meshing with current times really being that they've got a crystal thing going instead of USB ports, but give the guy a break. Who the hell has managed to predict USB ports??
Bester's creativity with text is refreshing and ingenious. He uses different fonts, superscripts and other variations to get across the idea of ESP communication. The text moves around and across the page in patterns when there are a group of Espers communicating. Sentences cross each other horizontally and vertically across the page. A typesetters nightmare, but a hell of a lot of fun for the reader to come across something so new from a book so old. (relatively old for sci fi).
The two main characters are strong and the scene where they agree to pit their resources against each other despite mutual respect is awesome. I got a tingle down my spine.
So at heart it's a police procedural set in a future where a section of humanity can read minds. The problem with crime now is that you can't commit a crime and get away with it because the law can read your mind. If you've done something wrong, then you're nicked.
Ben Reich, head of a powerful company that spans planets decides to kill his business rival, Craye D'Courtney. D'Courtney's company looks to be moving to launch a hostile takeover of Ben's Company, Monarch Utilities & Resources Co. So - how to do this when you're up against powerful 1st class esper detective, Lincoln Powell?
I love the get-around for this: Reich calls up his rather attractive advertising jingle writer and asks her to play him the most catchy tune she's ever produced. And you know what? It's damn catchy. I found myself walking around chanting it in my head after reading it. So whenever an Esper tries to 'peep' Ben, all they get is this mad jingle running around in his mind.
But Ben doesn't count on the daughter of D'Courtney being around when he shoots him.
So this puts a bit of a spanner in the works.
The bulk of the book deals with Ben and Powell both trying to track down this girl and then the detective trying to retrieve the memory from her although she has gone catatonic from the experience. It also covers Esper relationships - how they deal with each other, with trying to have relationships with non-Espers. With the idea that no one commits murder or serious crime and how people react when it happens, he comes up with a good solution.
Bester likes to play around with his words, which I appreciate. There are characters called @kins, 1/4maine, etc. I love this sort of stuff and it made reading it much more fun.
He also really thinks about what it would be like to live in a world with a section of society who have ESP. One brilliant scene depicts a reception area with a group of hopefuls who think they might have ESP and want to join the Espers Guild. The secretary in the room just sort of makes them sit around. What she is also doing is projecting a telepathic message to the room asking anyone that can hear the message to go through the door on the right. After a couple of minutes, one of the 'hopefuls' gets up uncertainly and goes through the door. The rest still sit around in ignorance. This is cool.
BUT - the ending. It kind of all gets wrapped up neatly and Reich is given the chance at a new life with a new personality that they are imprinting. There are revelations and a plea by Powell for people to open their minds as he believes we all have the potential to be telepaths. It's a bit twee to my mind. Reich is such a single-minded and brutal character that this whole plea for humanity sort of falls flat.
I still thoroughly enjoy the book - but as I've noted earlier, I still prefer Stars My Destination despite the novelty of this book.
7.5 out of 10.
