The Demolished Man

The Demolished Man is a science fiction novel written by Alfred Bester in 1953. The book was the first winner of the prestigious science fiction honor, the Hugo Award. This book is cyberpunk's version of Crime and Punishment.

The story is set in the 24th century in a universe of telepaths (Espers, called peepers in the book), although telepathic effectiveness depends on how great of a telepathic the person is. For example there are level 1 telepaths (the best), level 2 (pretty good), and level 3 (not of much use but still employed).

Here's a basic synopsis of the book.

A man named Ben Reich (owner of Monarch Utilities and Resources) is a rich megacorporation owner and he finds that his megacorporation is in jeopardy (danger of bankruptcy) because of his rival the D'Courtney Cartel, headed by the older Craye D'Courtney. He has nightmares about a "Man With No Face", which always leaves him scared for his life, and throughout the book even screaming and running.

Reich contacts D'Courtney about a merger between the companies and Reich misreads D'Courney's response as a refusal. So Reich creates a plan to murder him so his company will be alright, and so he will be able to take over the D'Courtney Cartel. Because of the peepers its hard to commit murder and murder hasn't been committed for seventy-nine years. If caught Reich will have to serve "Demolition" for his crime, which is later described as a sort of violent mental and neurological re-education. 

In order to carry out the murder Reich builds a mental block using a song he hears.

Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun. 

Believe it or not this jingle actually prevents most of the Espers from hearing and seeing his murderous intent. I could get more detailed with the plot but I think I will go with my edited short-hand version for the sake of being easier on the eyes (lol).

So basically Reich ends up killing D'Courtney, and he hires two strong Espers to work for him while he is being investigated by the police and their own league of peepers. D'Courtney's daughter catches Reich at the scene of the crime (where he shot D'Courtney through the mouth, blowing through his skull) and she runs away. She gets found later by the police who have her undergo some sort of mental rebirth, not Demolition but still mentally jarring. 

At the same time Powell, the main cop doing the murder investigation is finding out tons of information but he needs everything to be right if he's to prosecute, as this could make or break his career. Not only that, but the murder could be a break in the universe, for he couldn't take information from peepers about the crime because that would be against the Esper Guild Oath, which he had to respeckt at all costs. Even though he had or could get information about the murder from peepers it was against Esper regulations to use it in court. So there's that. Ethics in the future just like today.

So we have Reich and Powell fighting and going through the ropes, the criminal and the cop after him. Eventually Reich comes face to face with the Man With No Face, which turns out to be part himself and part D'Courtney, who is revealed to be his father. Surprise! The bad guy is your father! Star Wars anyone?

Anyways, Powell "asks the help of every Esper in attempting to arrest Reich, channeling their collective mental energy through Powell in the dangerous telepathic procedure called the "Mass Cathexis Measure". He justifies this by claiming that Reich is an embryonic megalomaniac who will remake society in his own twisted image if not stopped." (wiki)

Reich is revealed to be the son of D'Courtney, the result of an affair between his mother and D'Courtney, making Barbara (D'Courtney's daughter) his half-sister. Barabara is revealed to be a peeper so its possible that Reich's hatred for D'Courtney was inspired by a telepathic connection, which is also a sort of Freudian complex.

"Once arrested and convicted, Reich is sentenced to the dreaded Demolition— the stripping away of his memories and the upper layers of his personality, emptying his mind for re-education. This 24th-century society uses psychological demolition because it recognizes the social value of strong personalities able to successfully defy the law, seeking the salvaging of positive traits while ridding the person of the evil consciousness of the criminal." (wiki) 

The idea of re-education for criminals is a good one. I like that idea very much, in fact if America re-educated all the criminals we would live in a better society. It doesn't have to be as drastic as this book, it could simply be re-education through labor like how the Chinese do it.

The book shows us that although the world may change in the future with its technological advances, human nature will always remain the same. People will still be evil, murder will still take place in the future. Here we have a story that isn't utopia, nor is it post-apocalyptic, its almost like how real life actually was in Alfred Bester's time-the 50's.

The idea of the peepers is totally science fiction. In addition the idea that the bad guy is your father is also a popular trope in science fiction (Star Wars). The idea of Demolition (re-education of criminal minds) is also another popular idea from many contexts. I remember when I played the video game Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic I, in the end you find out that you were an evil murderer ruler of the Galaxies, and that the Jedi re-programmed your mind and swayed you to do right to all the wrongs you had committed. The book reminded me of that game.

This is a pretty important book in science fiction I would say. I was inspired by Bester's other novel, The Stars My Destination (which you can read about here), and I have to say I was not disappointed by this book either. The literary style has finesse and gravitas. In fact, the prose has such momentum that once I started reading it I could hardly put it down until I finished it. I felt exactly the same way as when I was reading Tiger! Tiger! (The Stars My Destination). Here is great writing and he finished the book in less than three-hundred pages. It's terrific. I've learned a lot about the old school style science fiction of the 1950's and I'm ready to read more.

Definitely check out this novel if you like science fiction.

“If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.”

The Stars My Destination (Tiger! Tiger!)

The Stars My Destination (also known as Tiger! Tiger) is a science fiction novel written by Alfred Bester in 1957. Bester is known for science fiction stories as well as having written for Superman and Green Lantern (he created the Green Latern oath). Its a story that takes place in the 25th century and revolves around Gully Foyle, a teleporter driven mad by revenge.

"Originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in four parts beginning with the October 1956 issue, it first appeared in book form in the United Kingdom as Tiger! Tiger! – after William Blake's poem "The Tyger", the first verse of which is printed as the first page of the novel – and the book remains widely known under that title in markets where this edition was circulated. A working title for the novel was Hell's My Destination^, and it was also associated with the name The Burning Spear." (wiki) 

Lets go over the plot. So the book starts off explaining this universe that Bester has created. Its the far future, people can teleport through their minds but not through space, and people have inhabited other planets and moons. Gully Foyle (an uneducated, unskilled, unambitious man), a monster (for many reasons, which will be explained) of a spaceman is trapped, stranded on a spaceship (the Nomad) for six months, subsisting on rations but pretty much starving and left to die.

All of a sudden he sees another spaceship (the Vorga). He sends out a distress signal and he knows the ship sees it. The ship passes him by and leaves him to die. His rage consumes him. He vows to kill whoever was on that ship, whoever gave the order to leave him there. This becomes his reason to live.

He eventually fixes the ship but gets captured by a cargo cult in the Asteroid belt. They tattoo an ugly mask of a tiger on his face, using needles etched into his face. Foyle eventually makes it back to Terra (Earth) where he makes an attempt to blow up Vorga using explosives. He fails and is captured by Presteign, a rich leader in government. Unknown to Foyle, the Nomad was carring PyrE, a substance that can make the difference between winning or losing in a war with the Outer Satellites.

Foyle goes to a juante proof (teleporting is called juanting) prison and here he meets Jisbella McQueen, and she teaches him to think clearly, and she also tells him that he needs to find out who gave the order to leave him to die, not just kill the people who were aboard the ship (Foyle's not too bright).

Together they escape the prison. Jisbella gets Foyle's tattoos removed but not completely. When Foyle gets emotional the tattoo appears. They return to the Nomad, where they take the PyrE (which is a weapon controlled by thought) and also a fortune in platinum.

Later Foyle returns as a man named "Geoffrey Fourmyle" (Foyle's alias was implanted in his subconscious mind during Dagenham's interrogation, Dagenham is a government worker), a rich dandy who is sort of silly to the other rich people. Through yoga he's learned to control his emotions and keep his tattoo from showing. He meets up with Robin Wednesbury, a one-way telepath, whom he raped earlier in the novel. He persuades her to help him charm his way through high society. The rape in the book brings to mind a problem that has existed for a long time. The rape isn't explicit but it is implied to the utmost degree. It was quite troubling and makes you sort of hate Foyle, but in the end you don't have to like Foyle or any of the characters to enjoy the story for what it is, a grand space opera, true cyberpunk. But I digress.

Foyle ends up tracking down the guys who were on the Vorga when it passed his ship but all of them were implanted with a death-reflex and die when questioned. Every time, Foyle is haunted by the image of "The Burning Man", an image of himself on fire but the fire turns out to be real and sometimes his clothes are actually burning.

At a high society party Foyle becomes smitten with Presteign's daughter Olivia. During a nuclear attack by the Outer Satellites Foyle goes to save Olivia and she says that if he is to have her he has to be as cruel and ruthless as she is. Robin is traumatized by the attack and wants out of this whole operation, so she gives Foyle information (on Vorga, on his whole mission) in exchange for her freedom and leaving this whole thing behind. Foyle takes the information then doesn't allow her to leave. Robin responds by going to Central Intelligence and betraying him.

Foyle learns that the captain of the Vorga joined a cult on Mars and had all her sensory nerves disabled, making her immune to traditional torture so Foyle kidnaps a telepath (a little kid) who interrogates the captain. From this he learns that Vorga didn't pick him up because instead it was picking up refugees, taking their belongings, and tossing them out into space. He also learns that this was all controlled by Olivia Presteign. Commandos come to arrest Foyle on Mars but Olivia ends up saving him, because she sees in him someone who can match her "hatred and need to destroy". 

Foyle becomes stricken with grief and wants to turn himself in for all the evil he's done in the universe. He gets captured by Presteign's lawyer Regis Sheffield, who turns out to be a spy for the Outer Satellites (Terra's enemy). 

"Sheffield tells Foyle that when the Nomad was attacked, Foyle was taken off the ship, transported 600,000 miles away, and set adrift in a spacesuit to be a decoy to attract ships to be ambushed. Instead, Foyle space-jaunted—a previously unknown possibility—back to the Nomad. Now, the Outer Satellites not only want PyrE, they want Foyle as well, to learn the secret of space-jaunting." (wiki)

Presteign reveals that PyrE is activated by telepaths and tells Robin to trigger it to bring out Foyle. Destruction is caused around the world but mainly at St. Patrick's Cathedral (where Sheffield brought Foyle) and it traps Foyle, leaving him unconscious.

"Suffering from synesthesia brought on by the explosion affecting his neurological implants, Foyle jauntes through space and time as The Burning Man. Finally he lands in the future, where Robin telepathically tells him how to escape from the collapsing cathedral." (wiki) 

Back in the present Foyle is pressured to hand over the PyrE and teach the world how to space-juante. He asks a robot what he should do and decides for himself. He juantes throughout Terra and throws a little bit of PyrE out to people, telling them if they want to learn how to space-jaunte they should follow him. "Either destroy yourselves or follow me into space".

Foyle realizes the key to space-jaunting is faith. He juantes from star-to-star finding places for colonization, but only reachable if he shares the secret of space-jaunting. The book ends with him back at the cargo cult, where the cultists await the holy man's revelation.

Wow, what a story! Now I'd like to go over the space opera & cyberpunk elements of this great piece of art and end with my thoughts on the work.

This book was very influential on the cyberpunk movement that would come later in the 1980's, particularly with William Gibson's Neuromancer. The ideas of the megacorporations, cybernetic enhancement (Foyle gets modded in the story, making him a killing machine), juanting (teleporting), telepathy (but limited), poetry (its partially inspired by a poem), and speculative science are all quite related to the space opera genre.

The literary style is quite stylized. In fact, once I started reading the book I couldn't put it down. The writing itself isn't complicated or highly detailed but it has a sort of "I must read more" prose. I read it at work on all my breaks. I wanted to find out more and more until I finished it, its that good. Here's a writer who is stylized, makes the reading exciting, and writes a great story in only two-hundred and thirty pages. This is quite a difference from what I usually read, third wave science fiction writers (I'm right now reading through Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer). This book is more interesting than that, more exciting, not necessarily more detailed, but better in the long run because of that. I learned a lot about writing from this book. You don't have to write a thousand pages to get your point across, because instead you can do it in two-hundred.

All that being said, this would be a great novel to come back to in a couple months or years. Twenty or thirty years from now I could read it and either get something new out of its ideas or revel in its literary and cyberpunk style. Either way, its still a fascinating book.