The Stars My Destination - Softcover

Alfred Bester

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679767800 ISBN 13: 9780679767800

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

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. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Long out of print, and hugely influential on both the SF New Wave of the 60s and the cyberpunks of the 80s, Bester's second novel is a fast-moving pyrotechnic extravaganza with enough bloodshed for Tarantino and enough social analysis for Marx. The solar system is torn by warfare--the discovery of a human capacity to move short distances by the power of mind has blown open the balance of economic power. A marooned spaceman, Gully Foyle, seeks revenge on the ship and crew that left him to rot, and pursues them among hereditary industrialists, sensory-deprived monks, circus freaks and the convicts of the deepest Hell on Earth. Marked by hideous facial tattoos, and haunted by his own flaming double, there is nothing that Foyle will not do-- and he is pursued by a selection of Furies as highly coloured as himself. Bester's profligate imagination gives us Dagenham, the radioactive courier, Jizbella, the consummate feminist thief, Robin, the one-way telepath, Ang-Yeovil, secret master of intelligence and Olivia, the albino who sees infra-red. Streetwise and high-gloss, this is one of the finest of SF classics, full of evocative scenery and much-imitated stylistic gimmicks that for once work perfectly. --Roz Kaveney

Review

you can see seeds of science fiction's next half century sprinkled throughout its pacy. compulsive narrative (SFX)

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679767800
• ISBN 13: 9780679767800
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258