The Stars My Destination

De: Alfred Bester

Narrado por: Gerard Doyle

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel that had intended to leave him to die.

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for over 50 years.

©1956 Alfred Bester; copyright renewed 1984 by Alfred Bester; special restored text of this edition copyright 1996 by the Estate of Alfred Bester; Introduction copyright 1996 by Neil Gaiman (P)2017 Tantor

“We stand apart and shape our own world”

Alfred Bester’s classic space opera novel The Stars My Destination (1956) is still impressive. Its ambitious style (which at times prefigures New Wave sf), plethora of concepts (many of which prefigure cyberpunk), cynical view of capitalism, romantic view of human potential, page-turning plot, themes relating to love, revenge, will/thought/imagination, and growth, and larger than life characters, especially the obsessive protagonist Gully Foyle, all hold up well today.

The novel begins with a prologue explaining 25th century solar system culture, “an age of freaks, monsters, and grotesques” in which teleporting by an act of will (jaunting) has transformed human transportation, economics, and relationships, and led to an endless war between the Outer Satellites and the Inner Planets.

In that future, Bester imagines many interesting cultural trends: jaunte jackals who scavenge the sites of accidents or disasters; women who chafe at being confined to the “seraglio” that is a reaction to the freedom that jaunting would otherwise give them; workers who jaunte to and from work and often quit too soon cause they can jaunte anywhere anytime; rich family corporation heads who show off their wealth by eschewing jaunting in favor of antique forms of transportation like cars and bicycles; Cellar Christians (and adherents of other faiths) who practice their banned religions in secret; people who voluntarily disconnect their nervous systems to abandon their five senses; commandos whose bodies are electronically enhanced to speed up so normal people move in slow motion; a form of torture which uses nightmarish virtual reality scenarios; a corporation which specializes in growing bacteria in giant vats on a moon; a robot bartender who suddenly gives insights like “Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory”; and much more.

In that future, Bester’s anti-hero, the uneducated, brutish, ambitionless “stereotype Common Man” Gulliver Foyle, spends six months dying and yet remains alive when the Nomad, the spaceship on which he is Mechanic’s Mate 3rd class, is attacked and wrecked, leaving him the sole survivor, mostly confined to a coffin-like tool locker on the ship. When another spaceship, the Vorga, owned by the Presteign family corporation, happens by, raising his hopes for rescue but then goes on its way ignoring his desperate flares, Gully’s transformation into a unique uber-man driven by his obsession for revenge begins. Gully teaches himself to read the Nomad manuals and then finds a way to get the ship moving again, which sets in motion the plot of the novel, which reads like a compact 25th century Count of Monte Cristo.

Gully becomes a monster, a tiger, for revenge (“Rot you I kill you filthy!”), symbolized by the tiger-demon mask tattooed on his face by the Scientific People he happens upon, a research group lost in space and living for 200 years by scavenging wrecked spaceships. He will go on to rape and torture, to use brains rather than bombs, to assume a buffoonish Bruce Wayne-like false identity, to dabble in physics, chemistry, poetry, judo, and yoga, to speak more standard English than his original gutter variety, to try to control his emotions, to become Solar Enemy #1, and to single-mindedly pursue his revenge.

Supporting characters in the novel are compelling: Robin Wednesbury (a black “telesend” who can send her thoughts to others but can’t receive theirs), Jisbella McQueen (a thief who tries to get Gully to control himself and to think—Maybe your target should be not the Vorga itself but the person in charge of it?), Saul Dagenham (a radioactive skull-faced man who runs the biggest jaunting courier service), Peter Y’ang-Yeovil (a clever Central Intelligence chief who speaks Mandarin but doesn’t look Chinese), Presteign (a basilisk-smiling business clan chief who follows the credo “blood and money”), Olivia Presteign (his blind albino ice princess daughter who has some issues with sighted people). They are convincing and larger than life, less potent versions of Foyle.

Lurking in the background of Foyle’s vengeful ambitions and the war between the Outer Satellites and the Inner Planets is PyrE, a thermonuclear explosive element detonated by thought. The way in which Bester brings together PyrE, the major characters, and humanity in the transcendent climax of the novel is apt, satisfying, exhilarating, and neat. The way he writes the climax, with disorienting and poetic synesthesia and chronological tricks, is impressive. And Bester’s insights into human nature (hate, love, revenge, forgiveness, growth, etc.) are cool, like this one: “There’s no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves.” The mental jaunting is something most sf would explain with scientific innovations and technological breakthroughs, but Bester wants to say it’s all a matter of mind over matter. Finally, the novel demonstrates that it’s up to each of us (or should be) how we shape ourselves and our world, whether we destroy everything or transcend.

Audiobook reader Gerard Doyle is fine, but perhaps his voice is not deep enough for the burning core of Gully Foyle.

Some things feel out of place in the 25th century future, like paper mail, and the sequence set in Gouffre Martel, an impossible to escape from prison, feels a little long and labored, but fans of Golden Age, classic, influential and well-written sf should read Bester’s novel.

Nester's Best

Within the limits of genre writing, it is philosophical but unusually humble about man's place in the big universe.

Best science fiction story ever told

The perfect message for our time and for all time. Also the perfect illustration of the use of a MacGuffin.

Mind blown

I loved this book! So original, and crazy. The ending was questionable and I’m not as sold on part 2 in general but you might think differently. Well worth it.

They don't write them like this anymore

This is the epitome of classic timeless science fiction. The romance feels a bit aged, but still solid and evolving