This post is pretty old. Oh well, it was saved as a draft last year some time but never published because I was too lazy. Seeing as how I totally forgot that this blog existed, I'll go ahead and post this here. This was a very fun read. Somewhat of a landmark too, it had some experimental and artistic passages near the climax and end. The way some of the text is laid out has you twisting the book in all sorts of directions, which invokes a feeling of dizziness, chaos, and confusion. I think some other authors saw what a unique idea this was and pushed it to the extreme (i.e. House of Leaves). A great book overall, the kind I that I would be glad to give another read in the future. Now for what I originally wrote about it:
Alfred Bester wrote a superb science fiction classic. He actually might have written two, but I still have not read The Demolished Man. The main protagonist in the Stars My Destination is not the most likable person. In fact, he's kind of a dick. But he becomes mildly likable by the end of the book. As I think more about the plot of this book, I can't help but compare it to the Count of Monte Cristo. I definitely cannot be the first person to come up with that comparison either. This seems like a sci-fi version of the tale. There's a lot of adventure elements in it- all involving space ships, asteroid colonies, underground prisons, circus people, among a billion other things. More than anything else, this book turns into a piece of art at the end. The text is arranged in crazy ways during parts of the book which enhance the disorientating feeling. It is a pretty unique book that stands alone.
I'm too tired to write about plot, it's 7am and I get off of work in 30 minutes. Here's how Wikipedia describes the plot:
"In the 25th century, "jaunting" – personal teleporation – has so upset the social and economic balance that the Inner Planets are at war with the Outer Satellites. Gully Foyle of the Presteign-owned merchant spaceship Nomad – an uneducated, unskilled, unambitious man whose life is at a dead end – becomes a victim of the war when the ship is attacked and he alone survives. After six months of waiting for rescue, a passing spaceship, the Vorga, also owned by the powerful Presteign industrial clan, ignores his signal and abandons him. Foyle is enraged and is transformed into a man consumed by revenge, the first of many transformations.
Foyle repairs the ship, is captured by a cargo cult which tattoos a hideous mask of a tiger on his face, escapes and is returned to Terra. His attempt to blow up the Vorga fails, and he is captured by Presteign. Unknown to him, the Nomad, was carrying "PyrE", a new material which could make the difference between victory and defeat in the war. Presteign hires Saul Dagenham to interrogate Foyle and find the ship and PyrE.
Protected by his own revenge fixation, Foyle cannot be broken, and he is put into a jaunte-proof prison, where he meets Jisbella McQueen, who teaches him to think clearly, and tells him he should find out who gave the order not to rescue him. Together they escape and get his tattoos removed – but not with total success: the markings come back when Foyle becomes too emotional. They then head out to the Nomad, where they recover not only PyrE, but a fortune in platinum. Jiz is captured by Dagenham, but Foyle escapes.
Some time later, Foyle re-emerges as "Geoffrey Fourmyle," a nouveau richedandy. Foyle has rigorously educated himself and had his body altered to become a killing machine. Through yoga he has achieved the self-control necessary to prevent his stigmata from showing. He seeks out Robin Wednesbury, a one-way telepath, and convinces her to help him charm his way through high society.
Foyle tracks down the crew of the Vorga to learn the identity of the ship's captain, but each is implanted with a death-reflex and dies when questioned. Each time, Foyle is tormented by the appearance of "The Burning Man", an image of himself on fire.
At a society party, Foyle is smitten with Presteign's daughter Olivia. He also meets Jisabella again – now Dagenham's lover – who chooses not to reveal Foyle's identity, although Dagenham has realized it anyway. Then, during a nuclear attack by the Outer Satellites, Foyle goes to Olivia to save her. She tells him that to have her, he must be as cruel and ruthless as she is.
Robin, traumatized by the attack, tries to buy her way out of her arrangement with Foyle with the name of another Vorga crew member. Foyle agrees, but immediately reneges. In response, Robin goes to Central Intelligence to betray him.
Foyle learns that the captain of the Vorga had has all her sensory nerves disabled and is thus immune to conventional torture, and that the ship did not rescue him because it was picking up refugees, taking their belongings, and scuttling them into space. He kidnaps a telepath to interrogate the captain, and learns that Olivia Presteign was the person in charge. Olivia rescues him fromcommandos, as she sees in Foyle someone who can match her hatred and need to destroy.
Driven by a guilty conscience, Foyle tries to give himself up, but is captured by Presteign's lawyer, who turns out to be a spy for the Outer Satellites. He tells Foyle that when the Nomad was attacked, Foyle was taken off the ship, transported 600,000 miles away, and set adrift in a spacesuit be a decoy to attract ships to be ambushed. Instead, Foyle space-jaunted – a previously unknown possibility – back to the Nomad. Now, the Outer Satellites not only want PyrE, they want Foyle as well, to find out the secret of space-jaunting.
Meanwhile, Presteign reveals that PyrE is activated by telepathy, and Robin is enlisted to trigger it and flush out Foyle. Bits of PyrE cause destruction worldwide, but primarily at Foyle's abandoned encampment in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the lawyer has brought him. The building collapses partially, killing the lawyer and trapping Foyle, unconscious but alive, over a pit of flame. Suffering from synesthesia brought on by the explosion effecting his neurological implants, Foyle jauntes through space and time as The Burning Man. Finally he lands in the future, where Robin telepathically tells him how to escape from the collapsing cathedral.
Back in the present, Foyle is pressured to surrender the rest of the PyrE, which was protected from exploding by its Inert Lead Isotope container, and to teach mankind how to space-jaunte. He leads them to where the rest of the PyrE is hidden, but makes off with it and jauntes across the globe, throwing slugs of PyrE into the crowd at each stop. "I've given life and death back to the people who do the living and dying," he says. He asks humanity to choose: either destroy itself or follow him into space.
He now realizes the key to space-jaunting is faith: not the certainty of an answer, but the conviction that somewhere an answer exists. He jauntes from one nearby star to another, finding new worlds suitable for colonization, but reachable only if he shares the secret of space-jaunting. He comes to rest back with the cargo-cult, where the people see him as a holy man and await his revelation."
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