Alfred Bester

Gerard Doyle

The Stars My Destination

In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men--and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.

altlovesbooks

"Gully Foyle is my name.
Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place.
The stars my destination."

Our main character is a bit of an asshole. Well, that's an exaggeration. He's way more than a bit of an asshole, but he's a resourceful one at least. Trapped aboard a wrecked freighter, stuck inside an 8x8 cube of a room for months, subsisting on what meagre rations he salvages during his brief trips into the vacuum of space, he wants nothing more than to leave. Just when he'd almost given up all hope, the sister ship Vorga approaches. Making every sign and signal he can, Gully awaits the rescue that....never comes. The Vorga passes him by, and thus begins a long revenge-fueled quest that pits Gully against huge sci-fi megacorporations, a war between the inner and outer planets, and drives him almost to madness (if he wasn't there already).

I loved the jaunting system that the author fleshed out in this book. Essentially, mind teleportation, at-will, only restricted by your own personal ability. The author carefully constructs a world where everything has decentralized, where new countermeasures need to be created to keep jaunters at bay, that takes into consideration the consequences of being able to teleport in and out on a whim. There's a lot of nice touches here that I wouldn't have considered otherwise.

I really loved this book as it starts out, then slowly cooled on it until I almost wondered why I was still going. There's a lot of loose plot threads that aren't tied up until the end, but the book doesn't really tell you that or guide you in any sort of way, there's a lot of blind faith in a satisfying ending involved. I also slowly started hating Gully Foyle, as he's an incredibly unlikeable character. Actually, most of the people in the story are unlikeable in different ways, but Gully really takes the cake. What brought me around was the ending, and the revelation (thanks to reviewers here) that this is just a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. Gully declares revenge on the Vorga and all aboard her, uses his considerable talents and money (thanks to salvaged cargo from his ship) to carefully construct the perfect revenge scenario, and then runs into problems seeing it through. 

But even after all that, I just wasn't able to rate it higher than three stars. It's a nice clever take on the revenge theme, but I wasn't able to get past Gully Foyle as a character. There's also a lot of old sci-fi baggage here as well, so be warned.

The audiobook narrator killed it though, by the way. Highly recommend, if you're looking to listen to this one.

the opening paragraph was killer, and i liked the writing style a lot. the dialogue left me chuckling a lot. however it was littered with so much orientalist aspects (espc. about Y'ang-Yeovil's "ancient chinese" techniques & the mention of "..hideously tattooed like an ancient Maori mask". WHAT?) which just left me incredulous

definitely went on a like-dislike-tentatively like journey with gully. my favorite character was def olivia... i support women's wrongs. too bad i can't jaunte bc i have aphantasia.

madina

the opening paragraph was killer, and i liked the writing style a lot. the dialogue left me chuckling a lot. however it was littered with so much orientalist aspects (espc. about Y'ang-Yeovil's "ancient chinese" techniques & the mention of "..hideously tattooed like an ancient Maori mask". WHAT?) which just left me incredulous

definitely went on a like-dislike-tentatively like journey with gully. my favorite character was def olivia... i support women's wrongs. too bad i can't jaunte bc i have aphantasia.

Hernando

I often find myself going back to the old classics, specially when I am busy and without enough time to read or when I am stressed and can not focus, just to find this. A fast paced, straight to the point and amazing ideas wisely packed in a short book. 
The last 50p were absolutely great, everything was happening as if it were literally jaunting. Also all the crazy stuff with time-bending, elsewhere-elsewhen-NOW-etc were nicely done.
Indeed a very entertaining reading.

One of the very best must-read SF novels of all time.

Charlotte Dann

A polarising sci-fi classic, at least for me. So much fun surrealism and adventure but I feel like it has aged really badly. I made a video review discussing it.

Sarah Escorsa

What a fantastic read! I've never particularly enjoyed science fiction written in the 50's and 60's because the novels don't usually stand the test of time and feel quite outdated, but this book aged very well:) I liked the plot, pace and characters although (as has been mentioned in a previous J.E.) some of them were a bit stereotypical. I think the foreword by Neil Gaiman added a lot to the book and gave a greater perspective to the reading experience. One last thing, I think it's a shame the editors changed the title to "The Stars My Destination" as I think the original title of "Tiger, Tiger" is much more fitting.

Melody Izard

He's lost in space and boy is he pissed when a rich man's ship passes him by and does not respond to his distress cry. And now this tattooed tiger boy is out for REVENGE!

The stars my destination

b.andherbooks

What the hell did I just read? I picked this up after it was referenced in Ernest Cline's newest, Armada. The premise was sound, a common man seeks revenge in a space opera much like The Count of Monte Cristo, but the overall story was wonky and off for me.

There are so many cool ideas - jaunting, the different societies on different planets, revenge, double-crossing, etc, but then there a lot of TERRIBLE ideas-women as chattel BECAUSE of being able to jump through space, rape, naming your main character Jisbella and having her nicknamed JIZ.

I don't know. This was not my style of writing, these were not characters I enjoyed, and overall I felt the ideas were never as fully explored as I would like. I finished it, but I wouldn't ever read it again, or really recommend it.

Green Bay, WI is referenced a few times in this book as a place where characters live, so that is cool.

Just not really for me.

anjali

Cody Degen

Yasmin

Lewis james martin

Sercan Y.

﻿#5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. “Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them.” —Joe Haldeman #5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. “Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them.” —Joe Haldeman "Bester at the peak of his powers is, quite simply, unbeatable” —James Lovegrove 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 fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iBooks has reprinted ReDemolished, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Josh Waldman

Martin Weitzel

Stefan Kuznetsov

Vladimir

Mrigank

Aviv Leo Zippin

Jeff James

Scordatura

#5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. ""Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them""-Joe Haldeman ""Bester at the peak of his powers is, quite simply, unbeatable"" -James Lovegrove 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 fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iPicturebooks has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.) Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

The Stars My Destination

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