Product Description

In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen. In 2301 murder is virtually impossible, but one man is about to change that... Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. The Demolished Man is a masterpiece of imaginative suspense, set in a superbly imagined world in which everything has changed except the ancient instinct for murder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31398 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-08
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

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

Synopsis
In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen. In 2301 murder is virtually impossible, but one man is about to change that...Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. The Demolished Man is a masterpiece of imaginative suspense, set in a superbly imagined world in which everything has changed except the ancient instinct for murder.

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #14 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * The first-ever winner of the Hugo Award for best sf novel of the year. * 'Bester's two superb books have stood the test of time. For nearly fifty years they've held their place on everybody's list of the ten greatest sf novels' -- Robert Silverberg * 'Alfred Bester wrote with the pedal to the floor and the headlights on full beam. His work combined erudition with an unparalleled imaginative inventiveness. Bester was writing cyberpunk while William Gibson was still running around zapping the other kids at school with a toy raygun' -- James Lovegrove

Customer Reviews

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 your mind - apparently nobody else had worked this out for all the years they worked there). The characters were unloveable and swayed between characteristics. The book was, in places, extremely difficult to read and follow, especially when the telepath's conversations continued in their heads with little or no indication of who was speaking or whether they were in fact speaking or communicating telepathically.

The technology predictions were, admittedly, surprisingly good given the time this book was written in but the social predictions were horribly, horribly wrong. In the timeline of the story nobody has heard of, seen, remembers, recognises or suspects the use of a gun in a murder case where there is a bullet hole. But the main character buys one in an average antique shop to commit a murder and this keeps the police force guessing for over half the book as to what the cause could be.

The characters over-used "futuristic" turns of phrase which sounded more like a childs "secret handshake". The judgement of all criminal cases is overseen by a computer which, although it is supposedly capable of interpreting and delivering legal judgement over (I assume) all cases in the world, it does not give its judgement clearly or any explanation thereof and leaves massive holes in its judgements which later are turned into plot elements.

I tired of the book by about the third chapter. I fought on until the very end out of sheer determination because it was supposed to be so fabulous and was sadly disappointed. I could not care for the characters, I could find no clever psychology to appreciate, I constantly fought to keep track of characters, locations, abilities and relationships and I found nothing within the book to stand out from an ill-thought-out sci-fi flick.

Although the reader is supposed to know exactly how a murder was committed and wait for the inevitably insightful policeman to get enough evidence to convict, they are more likely to wish the policeman was incarcerated for sheer ineptitude. By the end of the book, you really are wishing that everybody just cut the case from any further investigation and go back to their deliberately blinkered existence.

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?

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 strict Freudians..) and the roles given to women are one of the few things that show the age of the novel.

All in all, well worth reading especially as an education in SF.