"The Stars My Destination" Finished Reading *Spoilers*

[Sarah]

What did everyone think? I was definitely not a fan. Spoilers are allowed in this thread.

[Marc-André]

I didn't like it. Not because Foyle wasn't sympathetic, but it didn't help. Right from the start jaunting turned me off. Those kinds of mental powers are tropes from another time. There was a whole bunch of bad science that bothered me. I didn't care for the plot either. The Count of Monte Cristo did it better. The prose was a turn off too, but that might be because I've read a French translation of poor quality (or not, I'm not sure and I do not want to find out).

I'm not sure why this book is popular and considered a classic. It certainly hasn't aged well. Maybe it suffers from having influenced so many works and nowadays seems derivative rather than original.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, except those interested in the history and evolution of sci-fi lit. I'm not sure I want to read Bester's other classic The Demolished Man.

[Trike]

I didn't care for it, either. Although I'm not opposed to the ideas or bothered by the wacky, inexplicable superpowers. I still read and enjoy superhero fiction, for example. I think mostly it's down to the writing, which I thought was just terrible.

The ideas are uneven, too. I mean, the notion that the eradication of most disease would lead to a subculture of people who intentionally catch diseases for the experience is particularly brilliant, and very true to human nature. But then the stuff about jaunting just seemed overly fussy and poorly conceived.

Marc-André wrote: "I'm not sure why this book is popular and considered a classic. It certainly hasn't aged well. Maybe it suffers from having influenced so many works and nowadays seems derivative rather than original."

There is that, I suppose, but whenever I read similarly influential works, the "been there done that" aspect doesn't bug me.

I wonder if maybe this is one of those books that hits someone harder and seems cooler if they're both younger and less experienced with the world. It seems like the people it has influenced, from the cyberpunks to Alan Moore (who clearly mined it for Watchmen), got to it at an early age. It doesn't seem as dangerous as Ayn Rand because it ultimately has an almost positive message, but I suspect it appeals to a certain type of teenage boy.

The parallels with The Count of Monte Cristo are definitely front and center, but it's a much dumber version of that story. That doesn't help.

[Del]

The Stars My Destination is one of my favorite science fiction stories.

[Kristin B.]

I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. The first half was pretty dreadful. But, for some unknown reason, the second half grabbed me.

After reading the non spoiler thread I was thinking Gully Foyle was going to be another nonredeemable miscreant much like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Somehow I found Gully to be more relatable. He was awful, but at least he had a reason.

I also really enjoyed the robot having great wisdom because he was all glitchy from radioactivity. Maybe it's because I love natural chaos. I don't know. I just thought it was kind of brilliant.

I've never been much of a SF reader until this club. Scientific inaccuracies in novels generally drive me nuts. However, in the older novels like this one and I, Robot I sort of find myself impressed with some of the things they get right. It makes me wonder how much SF shapes the way we create technology.

[Trike]

Del wrote: "The Stars My Destination is one of my favorite science fiction stories."

You gotta give us more than that. Especially the "why". I'm not being snarky, I genuinely want to know what's tripping your trigger.

[Marc-André]

Trike wrote: "Although I'm not opposed to the ideas or bothered by the wacky, inexplicable superpowers. I still read and enjoy superhero fiction, for example."

It is a question of suspension of disbelief. I can believe Superman has special powers because he is an alien and Batman can do his stuff because he is a billionaire and a mama's boy. The explanations for jaunting do not suspend anything.

[Mae]

I remember enjoying "The Stars My Destination" when I read it the first time years and years ago, but today it annoys me for some reason. Or maybe I should say, Gully annoys me - the ideas and the premise of the book remains as fascinating as ever.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Del wrote: "The Stars My Destination is one of my favorite science fiction stories."

Agree. It's been a while since I read it. I'm going to do a quick re-read so I can discuss it in more detail.

[Todd]

I thought it was okay. Parts of it were fun and parts dragged, but mostly I felt the dialogue was too melodramatic. It wasn't real, people don't speak like that except in bad melodramas, perhaps soap operas on daytime television? The conversation with Olivia was a perfect example, "I love you I hate you" are you kidding me? I wasn't convinced. Compare that to someone like Scalzi who does amazing dialogue and Bester's dialogue is a (demented) child trying to imagine an adult conversation.

Also, the whole premise of his anger seemed so forced and disproportionate. Would someone really get that angry over a ship passing you by when you were adrift? I'm not so sure unless you were already having substantial (major criminal level) anger management issues.

That said, it was a pretty quick read and somewhat enjoyable. I wouldn't tell others to steer clear of this book, but I also won't go putting it on the top of my suggested books to read list either.

[Kristin B.]

Todd wrote: "Also, the whole premise of his anger seemed so forced and disproportionate. Would someone really get that angry over a ship passing you by when you were adrift? I'm not so sure unless you were already having substantial (major criminal level) anger management issues.."

After 6 months in a pitch black coffin, alone in the middle of space with dwindling oxygen and supplies, I could see how having salvation being that close and passing you by could make you snap. The ship should have stopped. It was a sister ship, he sent off the rescue flares which should have compelled them to stop. To have the end of torment in sight, and then taken away with no explanation, I think it would break a lot of people.

[Todd]

Kristin B. wrote: "Todd wrote: "Also, the whole premise of his anger seemed so forced and disproportionate. Would someone really get that angry over a ship passing you by when you were adrift? I'm not so sure unless ..."

Yeah, perhaps, but that's a real snap that then lasts years, and I still am having trouble understanding how that magnitude of a snap could happen and persist, simply from those conditions given the information we were given. Perhaps it needed more time spent with him in that locker so we felt the snap was warranted or perhaps more obvious or justified in some way? I didn't see him so much as amoral or immoral, but rather simply not possible based on how he was developed in the book.

Ironic, people talk about suspending disbelief regarding the science in the book, when my problem is the character, the science was something with which I had no problem.

[Michelle]

Todd wrote: "I thought it was okay. Parts of it were fun and parts dragged, but mostly I felt the dialogue was too melodramatic. It wasn't real, people don't speak like that except in bad melodramas, perhaps so..."

Agreed. It was okay but that's about it. It was odd.

Some of the story elements - like blue jaunting, time jaunting, etc - were explored well, but others didn't tickle me.

He was set up to be a truly horrible character - a rapist even - but I didn't get the sense that he was.

It kinda had the aura of Vonnegut, only I liked Vonnegut's writing better.

And memobeads. Hilarious. A future stuck in its own time.

[Ellen]

I thought it was amusing the facial tattoo was so shocking. Things have changed since the '50's.

[Anna]

I started this a few days ago and had to stop pretty soon because I was so angry. I was expecting it to be dated, but this really hasn't aged well. I felt so strongly that this isn't what I want to be reading in this day and age. I did pick it back up yesterday and finished it, and ended up giving it 2 stars instead of 1 because I'm trying to be a little forgiving of when it was written. I might end up changing it to 1 star because I truly disliked it.

I think the word 'hideous' was used about ten times to describe the 'Maori mask'. I get it, you think the Maori people are hideous, can we move on?

[[deleted user]]

This remains one of my favorite SF books. Alfred Bester, widely acknowledged as “one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction,” produced The Stars My Destination in 1956. Some people feel it is the greatest single SF novel.

With an amoral antihero, nefarious megacorporations, a dystopic society, technology used in ways never anticipated by its creators, a mysterious, cataclysmically dangerous, hyperscientfic element of desire (PyrE), for which the world’s secret service agencies and multinationals contend, the book anticipates perfect cyberpunk by more than half a century.

[Donald]

Anna wrote: "I think the word 'hideous' was used about ten times to describe the 'Maori mask'. I get it, you think the Maori people are hideous, can we move on?"

Uhhh... you do realise there is a massive difference between what Maori people look like and the masks they've historically created, right?

https://render.fineartamerica.com/ima... for example.

[Anna]

It's what I felt while reading. Just having the words 'hideous' and 'Maori' used together constantly made me cringe.

[CBRetriever]

I actually thought this was a rather interesting book. Granted the main character was no saint (psychopath), the author did a good job of making him a bit sympathetic and letting you into his mind. I didn't let the bad science spoil my reading (all older SF is full of errors).