The Demolished Man

How do you commit premeditated murder in a world where the cops have the ability to read your mind? How can you catch a criminal that you psychically know to be guilty despite that knowledge being impermissible in a court of law? How much will someone sacrifice in order to prevent their memories, their personality, their soul itself from being deleted from their body? What is the true potential of humanity? Tensor, said the Tensor?

These are some of the essential questions at the heart of The Demolished Man, Bester's magnum opus alongside The Stars My Destination. Despite being considered a work of science fiction, I'd much quicker think of it as a police procedural with SF flair than the opposite. From the very beginning, the story is told at a near-lethal pace, something that Bester did often and masterfully. Much like his other major work, and novels like Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia, the sheer volume of SF candy that streaks past you is both mesmerizing and overwhelming. A particular scene comes to illustrate: an underground, labyrinthine, prismatic glass cavern below a blown out industrial complex that formed during a bombing of the last great war, used as a séance room for a low-grade esper to swindle normals out of their money. It's scenes like this, moments of tension heightened by bombastic SF elements, that made the majority of the book a joy to read. That is, if you don't look to closely for plot holes.

Unfortunately, a few choices near the end of the novel really soured me from what was otherwise a exhilarating story. First, a twist ending that is wrapped up in a bunch of Freudian psychology that was probably a lot neater in 1950 than it is nearly 80 years later. Then there's the rancid romantic relationship between Lincoln and Barbara, the bulk of which develops during her mental regression to a child. Yikes.

Certainly a fun time, but for my money, inferior to The Stars My Destination. If you can turn your brain off and just enjoy the action I'd recommend it to most SF-heads.