The Stars My Destination (1956)

Tiger! Tiger!
This science fiction novel by Alfred Bester was not anything like what I expected. I’ve been aware of it for decades, with a library roomful of other classic science fiction authors and titles I’ve been meaning to get to all this time. But honestly, the title this one is known by in the US, The Stars My Destination, always gave me pause. It sounded like something aspirational or inspirational intended to dignify SF. But no. In fact, Wikipedia says some consider it foundational to cyberpunk. That’s closer to the truth, along with Bester’s original title, published that way in the UK, a reference to the William Blake poem “The Tyger.” Indeed, this novel helped me get a better sense of that poem. It’s potent stuff. It’s not without flaws, notably its treatment of women, which ranges from unfortunate to very bad. And the revenge story on which it hinges is fairly weak soup as well. But this main character—Gully Foyle—is a ferocious survivor, his face covered with glowing Maori tattoos. He’s finely tuned, a human machine of reflex, transcending hero figures and mythical whatnot by the expedience of his single-minded focus on staying alive, out in cold space in barely imaginable, always hostile conditions. Among other things it’s fair to call this short novel pulpy space opera too, involving a 25th-century war among the humans who have settled 11 planets and satellites in the solar system. A teleportation ability called “jaunting” is a new but natural human skill that must be developed and trained for, still not entirely understood. It’s one of the ideas that keeps the action well-paced—exciting, even, which was revelatory for me about a 1950s sci-fi novel. It’s dated to the degree it’s a future based in Cold War dynamics—thermonuclear weapons are the standard for military-grade options—which is not really a future we imagine anymore. But Gully Foyle is something more abiding, a figure that works still today, a model of the antisocial antihero whose ethos and everything is about simply not dying. Bester’s novel works so well it practically overcomes all defects. Don’t be put off like I was by the New Age-sounding The Stars My Destination. Lay into it for the Tiger! Tiger! It might blow you away like it did me.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.