Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderful Sci-fi Classic, Jun 8 2004
Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man remains an engaging, well-written novel even long after it was first published. Bester's principal characters are intelligent, resourceful, and wonderful to watch in their game of wits; the society he envisions is believable and fascinating; and the writing sparse yet sophisticated. I highly recommend The Demolished Man, as well as Mr. Bester's other works.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Tension, Apprehension, and Dissension Have Begun..., May 22 2004
Bester was a writer of the 50s, the brute-force, high-tension 50s of film noir, cool jazz, Brando, Tennesee Williams, and "Sweet Smell of Success". Nowhere is the essential nature of the decade better depicted than in his two novels of the period, "The Demolished Man" and "The Stars My Destination".
The premise of "The Demolished Man" is simplicity itself: how do you go about committing murder in a society where the cops can read minds, and alternately, how does the telepathic cop nail his man when he knows damn well he's guilty but has no evidence? A not unusual SF premise, more compelling than most, perhaps. But what makes "Demolished Man" worth reading a half-century on is its milieu and style. Bester was that rarity in SF, a writer of true sophistication. There is not a page of this novel that does not glow with that sense of knowledge of the world beyond the pulps. Some of us, alas, grew up thinking that this was what SF should be. (William Gibson learned from this novel--though not enough.) There was scarcely room for this kind of thing in the 50s. There is no room for it now, nor any sign that there ever will be again.
In its final pages, "Demolished Man" makes a metaphysical shift from detective story into something else, a near-religious leap of transcendance that could only be portrayed in science fiction, and then only in the best. A widely-known feature of the genre is the fact that its writers tend to stick to well-worn paths, grinding out the same ideas over and over. When Bester finished with the theme of "Demolished Man", no writer touched it ever again. Nobody dared try.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting pulp..., Feb 2 2004
Well, to start a review of a first Hugo winner, one would need to compose ones mind, to agree with himslef what he has to say to other readers...I did that, and I still do not have a clue whaat to say to you. If you watched Minority Report you know the general outline of a world...It is the world where any crime is not possible, becouse one can not hide his raw instincts in a world of telepath... But Ben Reich did that, he murdered, with passion, in with that act he started his fight with society...Of course, one can not succesfully fight society which is the moral note of every anti-utopian book...
This is not the story of the world, world is presented in scratches, in the bits of information that we need to now to build a case for our character, this is the story about the desperate act in a world where desperate acts are not permitted...
where does, if it does, it fail? Plotline, development, dialogues are something that you will find in every pulp novel out there, book is interesting and you will not be able to stop reading it, but one can see too much influence of the SF writting stile of '50s...
Average book that you should read to build your common knowledge (or culture, as some would call it)...
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