Years of cyberpunk, then the Count of Monte Cristo this Summer; just finished The Stars My Destination. Mind = blown.

artman · 4 months

At first I was put off, thinking it would be dated too. But page by page it did become in my opinion one of the best science fiction books of all time.

Gully Foyle is my name

And Terra is my nation

Deep space is my dwelling place

The stars my destination

Be sure to read The Demolished Man. Another classic.

Konisforce · 4 months

Love love love Alfred Bester. Feels like he tapped the pure core of a lot of SF ideas years before.

Demolished man is great.

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!

ac1115 · 4 months

I'm missing something and really confused.

What does the Count of Monte Cristo have to do with Scifi?

spkr4thedead51 · 4 months

A lot of the late 50s, early 60s scifi is really underappreciated by modern readers, which doesn't make much sense, because it's what heavily influenced a lot of the writers who started writing in the late 70s and 80s.

I don't think anyone can read something like Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon or Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer and not be blow away by it.

doktorgonzo · 4 months

I picked up a worn mass market paperback copy at my local library's book sale and was floored after reading it. I'm also a huge cyberpunk fan, and you can see the threads that form Gibson and Stephenson's worlds starting to come together.

Funny enough, I actually gave it to my dad who generally dislikes all the books I tell him to read- and he loved it. He read the Demolished Man prior and he thought this one was way better.

Anyway, glad you liked it, and I'm glad to see more people know about it too.

natronmooretron · 4 months

Read The Deceivers. It's a very strange sequel.

intergalactic512 · 4 months

Seeing this on Reddit just made my day. I also read this book not too long ago. I had read The Demolished Man a while back and knew what this author is capable of. I too had the same thought of how amazing it is that these books were written in the 1950's.
Intelligent, witty, creative and unique. That's what The Stars My Destination is all about!

lobster_johnson · 4 months

I see The Demolished Man is recommended here, but I also urge you to read Bester's largely forgotten and completely underrated The Computer Connection, also published as Extro.

It's about a group of humans who throughout the ages have become immortal — ageless, but not unkillable — due to a sort of genetic trigger. It includes a character named Jesus, a time-traveler who calls himself H. G. Wells, and a caveman. The main character specializes in discovering new candidates by triggering their immortality switch; unfortunately, the only way he's found to trigger it is by putting them in situtations where they face death (not unlike the discovery of "jaunting" in The Stars My Destination). Needless to say, most of his candidates don't survive. The casual and flippant tone of the book, the weirdly trashy future-English dialect of the narrator, the rampant amorality, etc. all make for a really cool little cyberpunk novel, easily as fun to read as The Stars.

Do avoid Bester's last novels, Golem 100 and The Deceivers. The former some really cool "besterian" moments, but the novel as a whole is a depressing failure, and not worth the time. The latter is a bit more fun, but still junk.

Do, however, please read Bester's short stories. The best ones have been collected in a single volume called Virtual Unrealities. Classics such as Fondly Fahrenheit, Adam and No Eve and Time is the Traitor are some of the most stylish scifi stories ever written. The original collections are out of print, but you can get them on AbeBooks.com.

thesaintoftous · 4 months

Reading that now myself.

Cognito Ergo Jaunteo. So good.

simucal · 4 months

Does anyone know of any other novels that are similar in style to "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Stars My Destination"? I love good revenge novels.

Overlord1317 · 4 months

The Stars My Destination is my go-to recommendation for anyone looking for an introduction to sci-fi. It's still crackling and fresh after all these years.

KashmirKnitter · 4 months

When I was in high school my I borrowed books from my boyfriend and his parents who had a huge scifi library. I was looking for a book one day and his dad suggested The Stars My Destination. Probably the best recommendation I ever got. I never would have discovered it without the suggestion. I read it and then immediately read it again. One of my long time favorites.

BeefMagick · 4 months

Kill you filthy!

I love that, sounds so visceral.

gufdon-upon-labur · 4 months

I found the book fairly enjoyable. However, I never thought to associate it with cyberpunk. Did I miss something importat? What parallels did you see?

ttruth1 · 4 months

Yee haw! That is one of my fave books of all time. Read it the first time when I was 12 (1974). Recently re-read it and it still rocks. Glad you found this classic!

"Quant. Suff."

coppersink · 4 months

There are certainly some very cool ideas and the end is very satisfying.

bkedelen · 4 months

I am sorry to disregard OP's original intention, but can someone recommend some top notch cyber punk to me? It is my all time favorite scifi genre but I am not sure where to go to get more of the good stuff. I have read Bester, all of Gibson, all of Stephenson prior to the boring cycle, and Morgan as well. I even read Shatner although I will deny it in person. Next I am considering trying to get into Ballard and Sterling. What else is out there that I should not miss?

Mosrael · 4 months

Reading Count of Monte Cristo right now. I would describe it as super legit.

rushmc1 · 4 months

Try John Brunner and Olaf Stapledon.

And Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

terminusest · 4 months

No one has mentioned it, so I'll put a voice in for The Computer Connection. An interesting piece by Bester - and one which leads directly in my mind to Psychoshop which was a Bester novel finished by Zelazny. The connect? Zelazny's works, especially some of his experimental novels, to me always bear the hint of having read and enjoyed the works of Bester and Sturgeon whose short story collections are excellent. The Computer Connection features a cast of immortals, whose method of becoming immortal is simply not to die. It's frantic and madcap, more so than TSMD, and less intense in it's way but also funnier and fancier.

Then again, my opinion may need for some a grain of salt - I also liked Deus Irae which was a PK Dick with Zelazny, and I enjoyed greatly Donnerjack and Lord Demon which were Zelazny novels finished by Lindskold, or Variable Star where Spider Robinson finished a Heinlein.

My advice on standing in dead men's books: Never go into one of these finished-by-another novels expecting one author or the other's voice to be as clear as in their own works, but I personally enjoy seeing what collaborations come to - especially where one voice is silenced, and the other must finish the sentence. Collaborations in the true sense are difficult, damnable things for writers and they freely admit that they are mostly highly improbable events that only rarely come to fruition - for many reasons, some of which Saberhagen reveals in the foreword to Saberhagen/Zelazny novel Coils (or maybe it was The Black Throne, or maybe in Lord of the Fantastic which is a short-story collection tribute to Zelazny by many authors, including Saberhagen for a foreword).

speek · 4 months

If you want more old fiction that predicts Gibson and Stephenson, try Shockwaver Rider

Alacritous · 4 months

Now go read A Canticle for Leibowitz.

jamesmcm · 4 months

If you want books like that, I'd recommend reading Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887 and its sequel Equality - I couldn't believe they were written in 1887 and 1890, given the way he predicts the television, credit cards, etc. so well.

Arodien · 4 months

Just bought this on Amazon. I haven't read any cyberpunk as far as I am aware, but I have read The Count of Monte Cristo and loved it and I also love sci-fi.

danfanclub · 4 months

Just bought it on kindle after reading this + comments. Wish me luck~

dallasbabcock · 4 months

I read The Stars My Destination in the third grade, it was my first "adult level book" and it hooked me on sci fi forever, that was in 1970.

Jack_Flanders · 4 months

yeah; i think i might have read this when i was 14-16, but it's now decades later, and mentions of it have popped up so much lately; i should probably look it up tomorrow am in my local supercool u-book store.... Thanks!

AnAnonymousSource · 4 months

I finished it a few weeks ago, so I can definitely empathise with that "did I just read something that good?!"-feeling you must be having, and being surprised at how modern it feels considering the publication date.

While the setting is quite exciting, what really impressed me was how much plot, vivid character development and sense of wonder Bester managed to fit into such a small novel. That sense of economy and panache is just admirable; so many bigger science fiction novels feel downright empty in every aspects compared to this one!

Doesn't hurt the prose can be beautiful too:

"It's just your skin making love to me."

ChrisAndersen · 4 months

I first heard about "Stars" at an SF convention many years ago during a panel when one of the guests said that if you surveyed SF writers the consensus pick for best SF novel of all time would be "Stars". I don't know if he was correct (or still correct), but it was enough to get me to buy the book and it also blew my mind.

workworkwort · 4 months

Gully Foyle's story is one of the ultimate stories of redemption, I love this book to death.

matts2 · 4 months

Read Kornbluth and Pohl next.

And then read yourself some Kipling. Not cyper anything, not punk, just awesome. Count is one of my all time favorite books, but Kim comes close.

neuromonkey · 4 months

Interesting. I had the same thought when I read the Raymond Chandler novels, The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. The Big Sleep was amazingly modern, and written in 1939.

swartz77 · 4 months

Thanks all. I'm commenting so i can refer to books mentioned here later.

geltoid · 4 months

Favorite book of all time.

Period.

If I had more time I probably would write much much more praise about this book.

I have 3 different editions and the graphic novel; About ten years ago I wrote an 18 page paper on TSMD and The Demolished Man and how they relate to man's primal instincts; In High School I was writing a 2-part screenplay (obviously the book is set up perfectly for a 2 movies) - but stopped when I learned that a screenplay had already been optioned.

Something struck me the first time I read it (I was young, maybe 15 or 16) and I fell in love with it. I loved the pulpy sci-fi, the character of Gully Foyle was the perfect anti-hero, and the writing/story (especially the synaethasia sections) was right up my alley. I had read The Demolished Man first and thoroughly enjoyed it, but this was so much better.

It has so many great elements in my mind:

Early cyberpunk -

Gulliver Foyle (in all his incarnations) -

Vorga -

Jaunting -

Saul Dagenham's death's head -

Presteign's "basilisk smile" -

Yang Yeovil and Bunny -

PyrE ...

and so much more...

It's unfortunate that this book (and Alfred Bester) has only a 'cult' status, and seems to always fly under the radar (anyone else remember how it was shoe-horned into that 'best sci fi books' list a while back?)

Good Stuff!

nerdshark · 4 months

I first read The Stars My Destination back in middle school, when a friend bought it for me for my birthday. It has since become one of my absolutely favorite sci-fi books because its more than just technological masturbation.

pisanty · 4 months

WTF is going on? Are you people all on crack it was written in 1844 ಠ_ಠ

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