From LawDog's Bookshelf

The Stars My Destination

"You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you...

"Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars."

—Gulliver “Gully” Foyle

I discovered Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination in my Uncle Don’s library as a wee sprog. It is the first book I read which had a visceral impact on me.

I had read Heinlein’s juveniles, and while Red Planet and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel were rollicking reads that I still enjoy, Bester’s stripped-down, bare-bones story of the redemption of an irredeemable man made me realize that science fiction could not only be fun to read, but that it could be great. It was capable of literary greatness.

Alfred Bester takes the character of Gully Foyle—a trash thug, a rapist, a murderer, and sadist—puts him through hell, and at the end shows you a driven prophet, unrepentant, but whom you find an admiration for.

When it was first published, The Stars My Destination drew wildly mixed reviews. Some called it genius, and some derided it as “grotesque,” “irrational,” and (ouch) “poorly written.”

In the ensuing years, however, opinion has settled more to the good, and The Stars My Destination is widely considered one of the “few works of actual genius.” To the best of my knowledge, it is the first book—if not the only book—to accurately portray the impact of synesthesia on human perception: a feat which apparently drove his printer absolutely nuts.

When it comes down to brass tacks, Alfred Bester took the concept of the power of revenge, the reality of tyranny of power and stratification, threw it into a blender with knowledge, self-discovery, and a good seasoning of evolution of character, and produced a science fiction classic.

If that wasn’t enough, understand that every bit of cyberpunk owes a debt of gratitude to this book.

“He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead.”

LawDog - former teenage warlord