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Alfred Bester


USA flag (1913 - 1987)

With two novels and a handful of short stories, most of them written in a short burst in the 1950s, Alfred Bester opened out the possibilities of the sf field both as vehicle for story-telling and as a way of looking darkly at the world and human psychology. The Demolished Man is a psychological thriller in which a tycoon decides to kill a rival and get away with it in an era in which telepathic cops catch every serious criminal; both in its sparkling portrayal of multi-person mind-to-mind dialogue, and in its narrative trickery, the story of Ben Reich and his nemesis Lincoln Powell is one of sf's most effective contributions to the noir thriller. The other is Tiger,Tiger (aka The Stars My Destination); if The Demolished Man is Crime and Punishment with telepaths, Tiger,Tiger is The Count of Monte Cristo with teleportation and interplanetary war. Left to die in a shattered spaceship, illiterate spacehand Gully Foyle swears vengeance and remakes himself as master criminal and dilettante socialite, and changes the worlds around him in the process. Tiger, Tiger is also an inventive working through of a conceit from bastardized Freudianism--Foyle is at one level a symbol for the unbridled id. Bester's later novels are considerably less important--with these two books, he helped shape both the New Wave and cyberpunk.
 

Genres: Science Fiction
 
Novels
   The Demolished Man (1951)
   Who He? (1953)
     aka The Rat Race
   The Stars, My Destination (1956)
     aka Tiger! Tiger!
   The Computer Connection (1975)
     aka Extro
   Golem 100 (1980)
   The Deceivers (1981)
   Tender Loving Rage (1991)
   Psychoshop (1998) (with Roger Zelazny)
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Collections
   Starburst (1958)
   The Dark Side Of The Earth (1964)
   The Light Fantastic Volume 2 (1976)
   Star Light, Star Bright (1976)
   The Light Fantastic Volume 1 (1977)
   Starlight (1977)
   Virtual Unrealities (1997)
   Redemolished (2000)
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Novellas and Short Stories
   Adam and No Eve (1941)
   The Push of a Finger (1942)
   Hobson's Choice (1952)
   The Roller Coaster (1953)
   The Pi Man (1959)
   Will You Wait? (1959)
   The Flowered Thundermug (2009)
   The Starcomber (2013)
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Non fiction show
 
Omnibus editions show
 
Alfred Bester recommends
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A for Anything (1959)
Damon Knight
"A brilliant craftsman who can handle any story form with crisp finesse."

Anthologies containing stories by Alfred Bester
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Sense of Wonder (2023)
A Century of Science Fiction
edited by
Leigh Ronald Grossman
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Black Cat Weekly #64 (2022)
(Black Cat Weekly, book 64)
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Nature's Warnings (2020)
Classic Stories of Eco-Science Fiction
(British Library Science Fiction Classics)
edited by
Mike Ashley

More anthologies 


Awards
Hugo Best Novel winner (1953) : The Demolished Man
Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1959) : The Men Who Murdered Mohammed
Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1960) : The Pi Man
Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1975) : The Four-Hour Fugue
Hugo Best Novel nominee (1976) : The Computer Connection
Nebula Awards Best Novel nominee (1976) : The Computer Connection


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