Alfred Bester. Loved by Neil Gaiman and Me apparently.

[Nate C.]

When I came on the boards about six months ago, I had a Bester quote in my sig and just knew I would be admired for my creativity and brilliance. Then I realized no one noticed.

Or cared.

And then I grew up.

But seriously, does anyone here know/read/love Bester?

For those who don't know the man,

He wrote the Green lantern pledge and created Solomon Grundy and another character I can't think of. He's one of the earliest guys in comics, a contemporary of Lee, Ditko, Kirby, Eisner, Kane, etc. etc. I think Chabon even mentions him by name in Cavalier and Kay, but don't quote me.

He went on to write and edit for magazines, notably Holiday, throughout the fifties.

Oh, did I mention he won the first ever Hugo award? Or that he's a grandmaster of the Science Fiction Award?

So here's what you need to read:

The Stars My Destination (my favorite science fiction novel of all time and one of Gaiman's favorites).

The Demolished Man.

redemolished. (short stories and essays) (I love you, ibook press)

and then, if you fall in love, the rest.

OK, I'll be back to discuss, but if this goes nowhere, I'll know you're all a bunch of troglydytes.

[berk]

I've read the two famous ones, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination. They're both great and I'd like to re-read them one of these days. Every SF fan owes it to themselves to read these classics. Babylon 5 fans might remember the character "Bester" played by Walter Koenig (I think it was?), who I think was a tribute to the writer (Demolished Man is about a murderer trying to hide his crime from telepathic police agents).

The first Bester book I ever read was one of his later ones, The Computer Connection, which came out in the 70's. I remember liking it, but I think I was a little too young to really appreciate it at the time. I should re-read that one too. I'm curious about Psychoshop, the posthumous collaboration with Roger Zelazny, have you read that one? Zelazny's a favourite of mine, and I have the feeling their two styles might be an interesting match.

[Perry Holley]

I love The Stars My Destination, it's one of my all-time favorite SF novels, but I confess I haven't read any of his other stuff yet.

[Tobias March]

Stars my Destination was great, but I loved how towards the end of the book Bester started employing comic-type writing to illustrate the warping of time.

You could tell he was a comic writer :D

Straczynski also seems to be a big fan.

[Slam_Bradley]

I've read The Stars, My Destination and enjoyed it. I've got The Demolished Man on a shelf waiting for me to read, but I've had a really hard time getting in to any science fiction lately.

[Tobias March]

I've read The Stars, My Destination and enjoyed it. I've got The Demolished Man on a shelf waiting for me to read, but I've had a really hard time getting in to any science fiction lately.

The Fanstasy Masterworks imprint, which published the Bester books again recently, have a fine selection of famous and forgotten sf.

[Scott Beeler]

I'm not much of a fan of the science fiction "classics", but Bester is one exception. I love both _The Stars My Destination_ and _The Demolished Man_, as well as many of his short stories. Lots of energy and an innovation and cleverness that makes his stuff not seem "dated" the way some other authors of the '50s or earlier do for me.

I've heard mixed-to-very-negative reviews of his later novels and so I've held off reading them. But the classic two are indeed classics.

[JeffreyWKramer]

THE DEMOLISHED MAN and THE STARS, MY DESTINATION are two of my favorite SF novels, and still two of the very best ever in the genre.

[Darkwing42]

I saw the books The Star's My Destination and The Demolished man offered together by the science fiction book club and read about his comic work so I bought them. I did not regret it. They both are in my top ten list with Stars My Destination at four. I went out and slowly picked up every other book of his I could find. He comes the closest to being able to make me feel like I'm reading a comic, because of the amazing way he could make you imagine a scene like you were looking at a picture and not just text. I wish he had done some more stuff, though.

[InfoBroker]

Like many other here, I've read the two main Bester classics, Tiger,Tiger and the Demolished Man.

Mentioning Tiger, Tiger proves I also read the Neil Gamain preface to Stars My Destination.

Both books are stunning science fiction classics, some of the best fiction of the 20th century. They are both on my top ten favorite science fiction novels. Since I only read them about two years ago, they displaced a Heinlein and an Asimov. The power of these stories is such that the Heinlein story is a powder puff by comparison. The Asimov tale would still be treading water, but panting a bit to keep up.

And that in not meant to discredit either of those fine storytellers. Just reflects how much impact Bester's work had on me. How I got through so many years without ever reading them earlier, I'll never know.

I need to go back and find that top ten list, or dreg it up from my memory banks again.

-jb the telepathic ib :cool:

[Greg Hatcher]

I am a huge Bester fan. Of course STARS MY DESTINATION and DEMOLISHED MAN are two books that anyone who likes SF should enjoy, but I'll second REDEMOSLISHED as being very cool too. And for Christmas Julie found me an SF Book Club combined-edition hardcover, Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester that's actually made up of two Bester collections, The Light Fantastic and Star Light, Star Bright. I think some of that material may be reprinted in REDEMOLISHED but not too much.

[Nate C.]

Cool. I went away, and you guys found things to play with.

Yes, Bester relied on fonts and design to convey his narrative at times, and it gets a little out of hand in Golem100.

Yes, The Stars My Destination is widely considered his best book (and my fav sci-fi book of all time. I find Gully Foyle a compelling post-modern post-human (Paul McEnry term) anti-hero fifty years before they were vogue).

Yes, Pschoshop was a lot of fun. I have read everything by Bester, and in order, I would read:

The Stars My Destination
The Demolished Man
The Computer Connection
The Deceivers
Psychoshop
Redemolished (short stories)
Golem100. (really falls short of Bester's potential)

Cool. Some Bester love on CBR.

[Darkwing42]

I heard that William Gibson has nothing but praise for the man, too. I've recommended Demolished and Stars my Destination to different people and they all enjoyed them immensely. I wonder how good his journalist work was, since I read that he worked in journalism while he was away from fiction.

[Nate C.]

Bester is considered the father of cyberpunk so I could see how Dick and Gibson could feel that way.

Necromancer and Pattern Recognition, the two Gibson books I have read, I have not enjoyed.

(did I just write a sentence the way Yoda speaks?)

[Darkwing42]

I think Yoda would have added "hmm, yes" to the end.

[Bright-Raven]

noljoner:

I don't know where you heard that Bester was considered to be the "father of Cyberpunk".

Alfred Bester is not the father of Cyberpunk. He is one of several early precursors to the genre and certainly a notable one, but historically speaking, Bester's contributions are predated by:

Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, p. 1932)

George Orwell (1984, p. 1949)

Bernard Wolfe (Limbo, p. 1952)

Bester's related work (The Stars My Destination / Tiger! Tiger!) isn't out until 1956.

So if anybody is rightfully the "Father of Cyberpunk", it's Aldous Huxley. But let's not shit on the greatness that is both authors. Because giving them that title would be doing just that.

The 80s movement that was identified as "Cyberpunk" was as much a literary analysis of the discontent of the social norms in the 1980s as it was the rapid growth of technology from 1965 to the then present (circa early to mid 1980s). A philososphical and sociological excursion into the possibilities of what directions humanity could go in with technology. But damn, that's what SF has been right along, from its earliest conceptions in the 18th century! So, what was the big deal? The fact that computers were beginning to actually exist and were entering the workplace and home, and were not just fictional creations.

And you know something? In the over importance of SF, that leads to a very singular, "SFW?!" to all these modern / postmodern hacks.

Ultimately Cyberpunk was and is simply rehashed materials from works by earlier, far more visionary writers, including all of the authors aforementioned in this post. To give Bester (or Huxley) the "praise" of being the "father" of Cyberpunk is, quite simply, a slap in the face to the far more consequential and powerful influences Bester's work and that of his contemporaries had on the SF genre as a whole.

[Darkwing42]

I gather you weren't into cyberpunk. I couldn't get into it myself, although I was told Neuromancer was good.

[Bright-Raven]

I find it funny that everyone mentions Bester's Green Lantern, but fails to mention he also wrote for SUPERMAN, BATMAN, and CAPTAIN MARVEL throughout the 50s under the editorial purview of Julius Schwartz. They also tend to fail to mention he wrote for THE SHADOW radio dramas and the TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET TV series.

[Bright-Raven]

Darkwing42:

Actually, I have no problem with all the "Pre-Punk" authors and stories. (Bester, Dick, Triptree Jr., etc.) It's the modern guys like Gibson and Stephenson and their kind that I dislike, because many of them are dull writers who are redundant with their themes and underlying tones in their work, and they aren't saying anything that hadn't already been said before them by superior writers.

There are few modern / postmodern CP writers who truly try to push the envelope. But then, that can be said of the entire SF / Fantasy genres as a whole, as publishers are becoming more commercialized and unwilling to do anything but continuing saga crap. It's a business attitude that damages literature on the whole in a multitude of ways. See the thread here on Books board about rape scenes in fantasy novels, for example. It's now such a cliche' to have your lead character raped or to have some sort of rape scene involved in the book somewhere, it's almost as common as the tavern scene. That shows a lack of willingness or ability (or both) on the part of modern authors and publishers alike to move beyond that and redefine parameters in the genre.

Cyberpunk and its postmodern stigmata are simply examples of the same mentality in the SF field. There is a place for the subgenre in the field, and there always will be. But until we have a new voice that shatters the preconceptions of the subgenre, the class will continue to worsen until its significance will be of moot concern.

And this bring us to comics (just because this is a comics site, after all). This is where the superhero genre in comics is right now. Not because superheroes are dull, trite, or boring. But because the publishers keep shoving out the same characters with limited to no legitimate growth as characters, and have done so for decades.

Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, published in 1984, actually heralds the same philosophical attitudes and breaks in societal issues that Cyberpunk did in the science fiction community of the same era, and as history shows, the "postmodern, hyper-realistic vigilante" movement in terms of the characterization of many superhero characters boomed throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, where it was finally met with a stigmata and jadedness by readers.

Unfortunately, instead of moving away from that process, comics has merely upped the ante, almost satirizing the level of violence and realness of the stories to a point of not only disrespecting the readers, but the characters themselves.

This is a trend that MANY comics writers, including every damned regular columnist who has ever written for this site, has touched base on multiple times, so it's clear to anyone paying attention that something needs to be done about it. But, as long as the publishers can push the same ol' same ol' and enough people continue to buy it (in spite of the tens of thousands of postings on this site and countless others to the effect of how much you don't like it), these trends will continue. Not to the demise of the medium itself, but almost certainly to that of the interest of the general public.

Is that a bad thing? Yes. A lack of interest in any form of literature by the general public is a horrifying thing.

[Darkwing42]

That's why I usually am very selective about what I read. I hate the whole, "Let's jump on the bandwagon." mentality. I don't mind sagas, as long as their's a point to it, not just to milk the audience for money. I feel bad for some writers though, they try and give their fans a bigger book to make up for the higher prices, and then the publisher ups the price claiming its a bigger book so they should charge more. God, I'm sick of money, I feel like I have to wash my hands everytime I touch any.

[Scott Beeler]

I think there's always going to be plenty of hangers-on and wannabes trying to latch on to the latest hot thing, in whatever genre or movement, in whatever art form. Cyberpunk like any other. There's some gems in there, but there's a lot of crap too. Sturgeon's Law.

[berk]

I've tried a couple Gibson books but haven't found one that works for me yet. I've read Neuromancer (around the time it first came out, so I wasn't put off by the hype or anything like that) and Count Zero, both of which I thought had some good ideas, but the execution was a little clunky. His characters don't come alive for me, I don't know what it is. I don't think he's a bad writer, though. Just a chemistry thing, I guess; his books don't click with me for some reason. But I haven't ruled out trying another of his books one of these days. As far as the "cyberpunk genre" is concerned, it isn't a term I've ever found useful. I don't see anything that would strongly distinguish the alleged genre from science fiction in general.

[Scott Beeler]

I've read Gibson's original trilogy of novels and not been too impressed either. His characters seemed rather opaque, his plots a little vague. Maybe it would have been different if I had read them at the time, rather than just around 1998 or so, and had them in the spirit of the time.

On the other hand, I like a number of his short stories (in _Burning Chrome_) quite a lot, especially "Dogfight" (co-written with Michael Swanwick). I find Gibson's early stuff (I haven't read his more recent work) to be largely style over plot or characters, and style can probably more easily carry a piece at short length. Or maybe he's just better at tight little set-pieces -- I can see bits in his novels which could have been pulled out and rewritten into shorts as well.

[Bright-Raven]

Berk:

One of the main facets of Cyberpunk fiction is the theme of humanity v. technology, and how humanity loses itself by becoming too dependent on the conveniences technology offers.

Science Fiction on the whole encompasses a much larger scope than this.

[Spiff]

I just recently read The Stars My Destination for the first time, and holy crap was that thing fun. The amount of ideas packed into that book astound me. For some reason, the colony of sense-deprivationists stuck out in my mind, especially how Gully handled that torture. Incredibly creative, and has stood the test of time amazingly.

Also, Bester's first name from Babylon 5 was Alfred (I believe it was mentioned all of twice in the entire series), so unless there's some great coincidence at work, it was an homage/dedication/whatever you want to call it.

[Darkwing42]

A lot of people loved Bester. Charles Sheffield wrote his book The Nimrod Hunt because of his love for The Stars My Destination. He had a character who was named after Bester in it. Later it was revised into The Mindpool, and sadly Sheffield died of a brain tumor. His books have inspired quite a few authors so I'd bet he has plenty of places where someone put a reference to him in. I didn't watch Babylon 5, so I don't know for sure if that is a coincidence or not, but there's a good chance.

[Bright-Raven]

Yes, the Bester Character and the Psi Corps on B5 were homages to Alfred Bester.

[Nate C.]

noljoner:
I don't know where you heard that Bester was considered to be the "father of Cyberpunk".
Alfred Bester is not the father of Cyberpunk. He is one of several early precursors to the genre and certainly a notable one, but historically speaking, Bester's contributions are predated by:
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, p. 1932)
George Orwell (1984, p. 1949)
Bernard Wolfe (Limbo, p. 1952)
Bester's related work (The Stars My Destination / Tiger! Tiger!) isn't out until 1956.
So if anybody is rightfully the "Father of Cyberpunk", it's Aldous Huxley. But let's not shit on the greatness that is both authors. Because giving them that title would be doing just that.
The 80s movement that was identified as "Cyberpunk" was as much a literary analysis of the discontent of the social norms in the 1980s as it was the rapid growth of technology from 1965 to the then present (circa early to mid 1980s). A philososphical and sociological excursion into the possibilities of what directions humanity could go in with technology. But damn, that's what SF has been right along, from its earliest conceptions in the 18th century! So, what was the big deal? The fact that computers were beginning to actually exist and were entering the workplace and home, and were not just fictional creations.
And you know something? In the over importance of SF, that leads to a very singular, "SFW?!" to all these modern / postmodern hacks.
Ultimately Cyberpunk was and is simply rehashed materials from works by earlier, far more visionary writers, including all of the authors aforementioned in this post. To give Bester (or Huxley) the "praise" of being the "father" of Cyberpunk is, quite simply, a slap in the face to the far more consequential and powerful influences Bester's work and that of his contemporaries had on the SF genre as a whole.

Bright Raven,

While I respect your scholarship and and analysis, I don't agree 100% with your analysis. (89-93% + or -)

A strong anti-hero (absent from Huxley, unless you count the savage, and there's not much satisfaction in that, and from Orwell, unless you count Winston, which is silly. Winston is the very definition of defeat before the race even begins) is central to modern Sci-Fi and the Cyberpunks in particular. Gully Foyle predates any fully realized anti-hero in Sci-Fi for a while I would imagine, and certainly becomes the prototpe for the Cyberpunks. He is a rapist, murderous thug who drags himself,and is drug, into the next stage of evolution, and by the end, outshines the rest of humanity, figuratively and literally.

A love of slang/language/technology (both Huxley and Orwell meet the qualifications, but Bester is concerned with newness, next stage of human evolution and otherness, whereas Orwell and Huxley neccessarily used language to describe the political, social, anthropological landscape of their creation and prove philosophical and political points. Or in other words, "doubleplusungood" is fully pregnant with deep meaning while "Presteign of Presteign" is just cooler than cool, and sounds great rolling off the tongue. Coolness is not one of the words used to describe 1984 or Brave New World.

Newness. Human Evolution. Man/Machine Interface. You mentioned this one. Again, Huxley, yes, but not for development. If anything, for regression. The Opiate of the masses, for Huxley, turns out to be an opiate (soma), along with entertainment. Orwell strips it all away in what can hardly be called a technological age, where shoe leather is in high demand and Victory Gin is urine water.

Interesting to me is the comparisson of the two. Huxley hypothesied that men could more easily be controlled through pacification and entertainment, and in (I believe) Brave New World Revisited, he argues for his brand of reality more so than Orwells. Orwell, of course, postulating that it is easier and much more powerful to denegrate and subjugate humanity. I agree with Orwell, and find 1984 both more fulfilling as prophecy and as a novel. It, to me, is a more realized vision, more concrete, more "real" and, birthing tanks aside, has been more prophetic. Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Sadaam, all found it easier to use Orwellian techniques than Huxleyan. (It could of course be argued that the West, Europe and the U.S. suffers from Huxleyan techniques, and I wouldn't disagree with that- television, drugs, movies, music, etc.)

Bester isn't concerend with either of these futuristic possibilities. He is as positive as the aforementioned writers are negative. And this positivity is yet another precursor of the Punks, to me. The future, for Bester, is filled with super-humans, able to use their minds, skills, bodies and abilities to height heretofore unheard of. His protagonists even follow this mold, to a tee, which is one reason his latter work suffers. Rogue Winter is to Gully Foyle is to Ben Reich is to Alf is to Sequoia Guess. The interface between men and nature, men and the supernatural and/or (because Bester does all three) men and machine will herald the next era for humanity. His future world aren't neccessarily for me, but they are positive in terms of his perspective.

So, anti-hero, love of tech/cool language and positive human evolutionary development are the factors I'm thinking of when I call Bester the Father of the Cyberpunks. And I did get this from scholarship; it wasn't my analysis alone (although this post and it's comparissons are my own).

In summation, it's clear you don't like CyberPunk. LOL. I don't either, but I still see the connections. I can't stand Gibson, and I honestly tried to like him, reading early and late works to give him a second chance. By the way, I think your analysis of the subgenre is dead on, and that Bester transcends it. (But Golem100 is a bastard of a book, and Gibson may have claimed some of that in tone, as his own) I just think that in the three ways I've mentioned, Bester put his mark on the genre. A parallel might be Brahm Stroker's Dracula leading to the Slasher of the Month Vampire book. Doesn't change the fact that one begat the other. (And like Stroker's debt to Eastern European folk tales, I acknowledge Bester's debt to other previous writers. He stood on the shoulders, etc. etc.)

And I don't see the clear connections to Huxley and Orwell. (as argued above)

But I respect your analysis, and enjoy the discourse.

Nate.

[Bright-Raven]

Nate:

I certainly respect your last post also, as it demonstrates a thinking mind able to express reasoning for a view point.

I was more speaking of how the scholarly / literary world that studies the genre tends to view it. I've examined several dozen college English programs in my former interests in possibly teaching college and it seems to be fairly common that Huxley and Orwell are also considered to be influential and / or precursors in the formation of Cyberpunk.

As for whether I like Cyberpunk, there are several works in the genre that I have thought were quite enjoyable, but they are not by the traditionally renowned authors noted for the field.

Certainly I respect Alfred Bester's contributions to the literary world, as a prose writer, a comics writer, and editor alike. In fact I feel his legacy is much greater than being a "forefather" to any one movement / subgenre in the field. That was the point of my original post.

[Solaris]

Fascinating exchange, Nate and Louis. :) I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

[Bright-Raven]

Solaris:

You're welcome. Now if the rest of the community could figure out that it only takes intelligent posting like Nate's to prevent my Darkness from ripping them a new one when they say something incredibly foolish, this community would be safe from my caustic side. :D

[Nate C.]

Nate:

I certainly respect your last post also, as it demonstrates a thinking mind able to express reasoning for a view point.

I was more speaking of how the scholarly / literary world that studies the genre tends to view it. I've examined several dozen college English programs in my former interests in possibly teaching college and it seems to be fairly common that Huxley and Orwell are also considered to be influential and / or precursors in the formation of Cyberpunk.

As for whether I like Cyberpunk, there are several works in the genre that I have thought were quite enjoyable, but they are not by the traditionally renowned authors noted for the field.

Certainly I respect Alfred Bester's contributions to the literary world, as a prose writer, a comics writer, and editor alike. In fact I feel his legacy is much greater than being a "forefather" to any one movement / subgenre in the field. That was the point of my original post.

That would be the 93% that I agreed with you about. :)

[Rabid Trekkie]

I've seen his stuff in the bookstores all the time, never read anything by him yet though. I get most of my books from recomendations. The way yall talk about The Stars My Destination means its probably going to be one of my next picks. I have to wait though for my financial resource to build back up again and finish my Complete Sherlock Holmes and The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I picked up yesterday. So it might be awhile.