[Book Report] The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Science fiction books suck, you say? All full of techno-babble and pscudoscience, you scoff? Not so, this book by Alfred Bester. Herein is crafted a gripping tale of brutal, mind-staking revenge, which also encompasses a search for the solution to a multifaceted celestial riddle. Along the way, you are met with some high-minded topics like teleportation as the primary means of transport; one-way telepaths that can only broadcast thoughts, but can't receive thoughts from others; radioactive G-men; a subculture of people who speak exclusively in the foreign language of subtle body movements; and a society of technocrats that have expelled the worship of any deity to the point where documents of such action are sold as pornography on the sidewalks. All of those complex and intriguing concepts, which individually could be developed into strong stories of their own, simply serve as background plot developments that you encounter in approximately the first five chapters alone. By that point, you've barely even scratched the surface.

The story begins simply, with a space janitor named Gully Foyle floating within the battle-damaged husk of a ship, hopelessly lost and barely able to survive. When a traveling carrier, the Vorga, happens upon Foyle yet fails to rescue him, the two year quest for bloody revenge begins in earnest. Of course, all is not as it superficially appears, for what seems to be a simple revenge story becomes rife with more political intrigue, hard-boiled gumshoe detection, and pulp brutality than you would expect. Foyle, the barbaric and self-described "educated tiger," becomes central to the power struggle between nations, across planets. His plight begs the question, if Vorga had not intersected Gully's life and sparked this quest for vengeance, would the warmongers have even guessed at the potential that he presents to be their greatest ally or - as the tiger's inclination may so be - their worst enemy? On the way toward answering that question, many age-old arguments present themselves with new twists: free will vs. determinism, the sacrifice of one for the good of many (and by extension, man's responsibility to his fellow man), potential vs. stagnation, purpose vs. obsession, and countless more. The plus side to these conundrums is that, through Foyle, there are no easy answers, only a unique glimpse at resolve that may not necessarily gel with our own opinions.

The revenge theme has always been one that I've enjoyed. Vengeance is so strong a motivation in these stories; it's interesting to me how characters seeking revenge view the singlemindedness of their quests. Most writers have a difficult time allowing their characters to see the plight of vengeance; that which drives us in our goal to destroy will cease to drive us if we are successful. One glaring example is that Foyle doesn't recognize the simple irony that, if it weren't for Vorga's failure to intervene, he'd never have survived; the target of his vengeance becomes his savior, but by serving as Foyle's obsession.

One thing that I also noticed was that the future presented in Stars is a few clicks removed from your typical "dystopic future" passed off in other science fiction works, be it book, film or videogame. There is wholesale corporate and governmental corruption, yes, and there is subtle exploitation of the masses, but would Bester's 2103 really be any different from the 2006 that we now know, if you just shut your eyes and listened closely? Probably not; only the superscience is different. And given how things have worked out, for Foyle and for 2006 American man, that's a pretty scary damn thing. We're seeing the enemy, ya'll, and he is us. And them. And you and me, but especially you.

This is definitely a three count book; I hadn't come across a fiction in quite some time that I actually couldn't wait to get home to a quiet place to finish reading it. Chapters flowed like wine across the lips of drunken fools. I highly recommend this one.