Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN: 9780140025361
Edition: New Impression
ISBN: 0140025367
Label: Penguin Books Ltd
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: November 28, 1974
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Studio: Penguin Books Ltd

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Alfred Bester's early, pyrotechnic novels gave us two of SF's greatest antiheroes: Gully Foyle in The Stars My Destination (1956) and Ben Reich in The Demolished Man (1953)--which deservedly won the first-ever Hugo Award for Best Novel. Reich is an obsessed monster, haunted by nightmares of a Man With No Face, driven and compelled to murder a rival magnate in a future where crime can't be hidden from police telepaths. The penalty is Demolition: erasure of the criminal's mind. Armed with an ugly weapon holding very special ammo, an insane jingle to mask his thoughts, and the resources of his interplanetary business empire, Reich takes on the world--but, as hinted by clues in chapter 1, he still doesn't understand his own buried motives. It's an impossible problem for police chief Lincoln Powell, one of the hated mind-reading elite--who knows very well whodunnit but can't go to court on telepathic evidence alone. Bester's dazzling 24th century is full of brilliant and dotty conceits, most famously the woven typographic patterns of telepaths' group 'conversations'. A gripping, headlong storyline hurtles from Earth's decadent high society to its lowest dives, with an interlude of mayhem at the Spaceland asteroid resort. The final confrontations are apocalyptic and unforgettable, with major psychological shockers and a moving aftermath. A genuine SF classic. --David Langford




Rating: - Appalling
Okay, this was the first time I'd heard of the book or, indeed, the author and I read it along with three other "famous" sci-fi books that I had promised myself I should read. It was the most disappointing of all the books I read.

I have to say that this book was truly terrible. The plotlines were seriously flawed (telepaths are so "reliable" at reading people's minds that they are on the police force but humming a jingle in your head blocks them from being able to read anything from ... Read More

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Rating: - Tensor said the tensor
Once read, never forgotten. "Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun". I still remember that thirty years after reading it. I bet what I remember is nothing like the correct words, but the plot and most of the details are fresh in my mind. How to commit a crime when there are telepaths who can read your thoughts?

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Rating: - Mostly excellent, a little heavy on the Freudian opinions
Given its age, genuinely excellent. Particularly the leading characters; along with his other anti-hero Gully Foyle - of 'The stars my destination' - Ben Reich is one of the great characters of SF. As others have noted the book reads like cyberpunk; containing a whole dystopian world presided over by the peepers and the brilliant, amoral and obsessed Reich.

The bad stuff? Well the Freudian elements seemed a little heavy handed (but I'm sure there are psychiarists out there who are still ... Read More

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Rating: - The Demolished Man and The Stars, My Destination = Buy
It’s genuinely hard to believe that this book was written in 1951 because it reads like a cyberpunk novel written yesterday. It’s breathtakingly fast yet still manages to flesh out two of the most interesting characters in SF.

The Demolished Man builds a world of hugely powerful corporations and guilds where murder has been eliminated through the use of telepaths called ‘espers’. The story revolves around Ben Reich, the head of the vast Monarch business empire. (Incidentally ... Read More

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Rating: - Unique and Inspiring
It is one of the great shames of Twentieth Century Science Fiction that Alfred Bester never wrote more and Asimov less. This startlingly innovative, iconoclastic and experimental work, Bester's first novel, was in its own way the 'Neuromancer' of its day. On one level it is a murder mystery in which the reader witnesses the murder, and from then on follows the investigation to bring the perpetrator to justice, or in this case, Demolition. Demolition involves having one's personality erased and rebuilt without ... Read More

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