Featured Lists
Authors
Sci Fi and Fantasy books everyone should Read - The Stars My Destination (S.F. Masterworks)
New From £16.59
Used From £2.78
- Author: Alfred Bester
- Type: Paperback
- ISBN: 1857988140
- Publisher: Gollancz
Synopsis
Long out of print, and hugely influential on both the SF New Wave of the 60s and the cyberpunks of the 80s, Bester's second novel is a fast-moving pyrotechnic extravaganza with enough bloodshed for Tarantino and enough social analysis for Marx. The solar system is torn by warfare--the discovery of a human capacity to move short distances by the power of mind has blown open the balance of economic power. A marooned spaceman, Gully Foyle, seeks revenge on the ship and crew that left him to rot, and pursues them among hereditary industrialists, sensory-deprived monks, circus freaks and the convicts of the deepest Hell on Earth. Marked by hideous facial tattoos, and haunted by his own flaming double, there is nothing that Foyle will not do-- and he is pursued by a selection of Furies as highly coloured as himself. Bester's profligate imagination gives us Dagenham, the radioactive courier, Jizbella, the consummate feminist thief, Robin, the one-way telepath, Ang-Yeovil, secret master of intelligence and Olivia, the albino who sees infra-red. Streetwise and high-gloss, this is one of the finest of SF classics, full of evocative scenery and much-imitated stylistic gimmicks that for once work perfectly. --Roz Kaveney
Reviews
This highly regarded sci-fitle yarn with an intellectual sounding title (and nod to William Blake in its original UK title "Tiger, Tiger") ultimately reads like a season of Heroes - the plot jumps around somewhat implausibly even within the story's logic - suddenly the protagonist is deeply in love with another character - suddenly with another character. In the space between two chapters Gully Foyle has become the richest man in the solar system with no explanation how.
Despite Neil Gaiman's slightly pompous introduction claiming that the book charts the development of Gully Foyle, the characters' sole purpose is to deliver the ideas of a fantastic distant future that are crammed into the novel. These are the strongest point of the book, and no doubt the real reason writers such as William Gibson are quoted on the cover as saying it is the sci-fi novel they most enjoyed. I can't really say the same myself. This is on a par with Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat", not the best of Sci-Fi. Fun, and a classic of sorts, but not great fiction.
Duncan Drury
This novel has a heck of a reputation, and arrives with quotes from various sci-fi authors on the back saying how brilliant it is, so it is hard to read it without high expectations. Expectations that, for me, it doesn't quite live up to.
It is a remarkable book, particularly considering it was written in the 50s, and Gully Foyle the central protagonist is a memorable, brutal yet sympathetic anti-hero.
The book cracks along at a great pace, a bit like an action movie script. Though with sections of exposition between the big set pieces. But it's all just a little to fantastical, and Gullys ability to escape from pretty much every threat starts to wear after a while. Also while the core characters are intriguing the world in which the live is bare sketched in.
But having set that is is a very good and memorable read, well worth it place on the list of great sc-fi novels. But for me nor quite as great as the plaudits suggest.
Lendrick
No poise,no development of character,no knowledge of how plot can move a novel forward,these are serious faults for a book that has been given the title of masterwork- yet on Amazon I keep reading reviews that gush praise all over this deeply flawed rubbish.The faults I have listed above are glaring but believe me they pale into insignificance against the actual solidly BAD writing contained between the back and front covers.This is it must be admitted no new thing where this series is concerned for on a long list I can only think of three maybe four authors that save it from complete ridicule.They are(in my opinion)Wells,Aldiss(Non-Stop) Stapleton(First and Last Men/Starmaker)and perhaps Clark(though my jury is still out on that one).Come on people get real!Stop heaping ill deserved praise on books that are clearly not even good let alone masterpieces and then maybe,just maybe we might get a masterworks list full of just that MASTERWORKS and not hastily written undigested junk.
ivor winters
I enjoyed reading this book, but I'm not really sure why it's so highly regarded. The concept was interesting if somewhat unlikely but the execution seemed rather poor to me. The writing is often clumsy and the characters seemed forced and un-natural. It was a good book, with some fascinating and fun ideas, it's just the development of the ideas and the movement between them is not as slick as some other writers manage.
Sulkyblue
In the 26th century Mankind is living a decadent existence. The main advancement that has aided this hedonistic life is jaunting, the ability to think yourself to any location on the planet. One person who isn't enjoying the high life is Gully Foyle. He's a stoker (3rd class) on a space freighter. He's a man without ambition, interests or use. Even an explosion on the ship that leaves him as the sole survivor isn't enough to shake him from his torpor. He survives for six months, but then a salvage crew arrives. They decide that the ship isn't worth saving, and neither is he.
Being left to die in the depths of space makes Gully snap out of his fugue and he morphs from a non-entity to a resourceful, intelligent and possessed superman. He has one function now in life and that is to find the men responsible and make them pay. He will kill, maim, steal, and destroy anyone and anything as long as he gets his revenge, and yet as he progresses he becomes aware that all is not as it seems. He is at the centre of a greater mystery...
It's interesting to compare this novel to more recent blockbuster sf epics, which can take many hundreds of pages to cover less ground than this book does in 200 pages. Not one word is wasted. No scene or sub-plot is irrelevant. Ideas are presented at break-neck pace before moving on. The story telling is cut to its barest, sparest, breath-taking minimum as it moves effortlessly from one brilliant set piece to another: the escape from the world's most secure prison armed only with a big piece of wood, the ambassador's ball, the search for the child prodigy telepath, the lair of the Sklotsky sect. From the best opening line in sf: "He was 170 days dying and not yet dead" to the apocalyptic finale, the pace never lets up. Although initially Gully Foyle seems an unsympathetic character (a dead-beat no-hoper turned one-man army) he transcends this to become the anti-hero against which all anti-heroes should be measured.
Although the finale shares some themes with 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fact it was written 15 years earlier means it can be forgiven. The only fault is, of course, that the science in some places has dated, so modern readers may grind their teeth at the 50s presentation of space travel, but the fast, furious and memorable story is strong enough to overcome this. The one worry this novel has always given me is that a Hollywood mogul may one day realize that as this book already reads like a screenplay, it would make a great film. The thought of a big Arnie clone actor being cast as Gully Foyle and grunting, "I kill you deadly" would ruin this novel for me.
Blackhorse47
