The Demolished Man
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| The Demolished Man | |
 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Alfred Bester |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Mark Reinsberg |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Shasta Publishers (first edition) |
| Publication date | 1953 |
| Media type | print (hardback) |
| Pages | 250 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| OCLC | 3638143 |
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a science fiction novel that was the first Hugo Award winner in 1953. The story was first serialized in three parts, beginning with the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, followed by publication of the novel in 1953. The novel is dedicated to Galaxy's editor, H. L. Gold, who made suggestions during its writing. Bester's title was Demolition!, but Gold talked him out of it.
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[edit] Synopsis
The Demolished Man is an American science fiction police procedural novel set in a future where telepathy is common, although much of its effectiveness is derived from one individual having greater telepathic skill than another. Though written 30 years before the cyberpunk boom of the 1980s, the novel anticipates this sub-genre with its mix of plot elements such as powerful corporations, high-tech weaponry and the interplay between varying classes of society.
The story occurs in the 24th Century, in a society where telepaths — "Espers", colloquially known as "peepers" — are completely integrated into all levels of society. Espers are classed according to their abilities: Class 3 Espers are the most common, can detect only conscious thoughts at the time they are formed and are often employed as secretaries or administrators; Class 2 Espers can dig more deeply, to the pre-conscious level, detecting subliminal patterns, epiphanies, and tenuous associations, and form the professional middle class - lawyers, managers and so on; Class 1 Espers can detect all of the foregoing plus sub-conscious, primitive urges, and occupy only the highest levels of power in the police and government. All Espers can telepathically communicate amongst themselves, and the more powerful Espers can overwhelm their juniors. Telepathic ability is innate and heritable, but can remain latent and undetected in untrained persons. Once recognized, however, natural aptitude can be developed through instruction and exercise. There is a guild to improve Espers’ telepathic skills, to set and enforce ethical conduct guidelines, and to increase the Esper population through intermarriage. Some telepaths object to the Esper Guild’s authoritarian control, however, and remain outside of it.
The story centers around Ben Reich, the impetuous young owner of Monarch Enterprises, a commercial cartel that the Reich family has possessed for generations. Monarch Enterprises is in danger of bankruptcy, because of the greater success of its chief rival, the D’Courtney Cartel, headed by the older Craye d’Courtney. Reich also suffers recurring nightmares in which a Man with No Face persecutes him.
As this combination of pressures takes its toll, in an attempt to address his problems Reich contacts D'Courtney and proposes a merger of their concerns. Crucially for the plot, Reich's damaged psychological state causes him to misread D'Courtney's positive response as a refusal[1]. frustrated and desperate, Reich therefore determines to kill Craye d’Courtney. The presence of peepers has prevented the commission of murder for more than 70 years, so Reich devises an elaborate plan to ensure his freedom. If he is caught, Reich will certainly face “Demolition”, a terrible punishment described only at story's end.
Firstly, Reich hires an Esper to “run interference” for him — hiding his murderous thoughts from any peepers present at the scene of the planned crime. Reich has many Class 2 and Class 3 Espers working for him, but for this task he must hire a top Class 1 Esper. Reich bribes Dr. Gus Tate, a prominent peeper psychiatrist, to be his mental bodyguard during the murder. Dr. Tate helps Reich by stealing information about D’Courtney’s whereabouts by peeping an unknowing colleague.
To further conceal his intentions, Reich visits a songwriter who teaches him a deceptively simple jingle: 'Tenser', said the Tensor; 'tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun' that proves to be an earworm, so persistent and involving, that it blocks most Espers from properly peeping into Reich's mind; (the lyrics are a favorite feature of the book to its fans). Reich also secures a small flash grenade which can disrupt a victim's perception of time by destroying the eyes' rhodopsin, and an antique (twentieth-century) handgun, a rare object in a largely non-violent society. Reich is also advised how to replace the bullet in the handgun's ammunition with a gelatin capsule filled with water, in order to eliminate ballistics evidence.
Influencing a socialite into playing a game of Sardines at a party, Reich executes his plan during the game, but at the moment he shoots D'Courtney, D’Courtney’s young daughter, Barbara, witnesses the murder and runs away. She is later found, suffering severe psychological shock that renders her speechless. When the crime scene is secured, Lincoln Powell, the antagonist of the story emerges.
Police Prefect Lincoln Powell is a Class 1 Esper. He is a highly talented man expected to become the next president of the Esper Guild. Powell immediately discovers Reich through some cleverly disguised peeping, however, Reich’s Esper attorney is present at that encounter, noting that telepathically-gathered evidence is legally inadmissible in court. This obliges Powell to assemble the murder case with traditional police procedures, and to establish motive, opportunity, and method.
Both sides center on finding and questioning - or, in Reich's case, silencing - Barbara d’Courtney. Although Reich finds her first, he is unable to kill her; Powell rescues her, but loses Reich. Powell's pursuit traverses the Solar System, as Reich escapes the police and a series of mysterious assassination attempts which include use of a harmonic gun which kills by sonic vibration. But Reich fails to murder his chief of communications, and Powell succeeds in abducting him.
Powell has already established opportunity, and eventually method through discovery of a tiny fragment of gelatin in the body. However, just as Powell believes that he has wrapped the case up entirely, the interrogation of Reich's communications chief yields results - D'Courtney had accepted the merger proposal! This dashes Powell's case; as he remarks, no court in the Solar System would believe Reich murdered D'Courtney when D'Courtney was needed alive for the merger (which would save Reich and give him all the power & wealth he dreamed of) to succeed.
Reich's tortured mental state is unknown to him, and so Powell does not suspect that the motive for the murder was something other than financial.
As he learns more, Powell recognizes that the forces behind Reich’s crime are greater than anticipated. He asks the help of every Esper in attempting to arrest Reich, channeling their collective mental energy through Powell in the dangerous telepathic procedure Mass Cathexis Measure; Powell narrowly succeeds.
At the climax of the book, Ben Reich is revealed to be the illegitimate son of Craye d’Courtney - Reich's hatred of him was probably because of his latent, telepathic knowledge of that fact. Reich's knowledge isn’t explicitly stated, but Barbara, Reich’s half-sister, is herself revealed to be a peeper. The assassination attempts on Reich turn out to have been carried out by Reich himself, as a result of his extremely disturbed state. Once arrested and convicted, Reich is sentenced to the dreaded Demolition — the stripping away of his memories and the upper layers of his personality, emptying his mind for re-education. This 24th century society uses psychological demolition because it recognises the social value of strong personalities able to successfully defy the law, seeking the salvaging of positive traits in ridding the person of the evil consciousness of the criminal. A similar procedure is referenced in the Babylon 5 episode "Passing Through Gethsemane."
[edit] Characters
Alfred Bester sought to create equal rivals in his depictions of Ben Reich and Lincoln Powell. Although the figures are not properly balanced, they share qualities that set them apart from their peers. Reich is probably the most intriguing character. He lacks moral integrity, and is willing to take considerable risks in order to see his wishes carried out, however, he is a very charming man to many around him, especially at the story's beginning, when his desperation is still checked. His personal mantra is: Make your enemies by choice, not by accident. Throughout the story, the reader may sympathize with Reich as much as with Powell.
Lincoln Powell is said to have a dual personality; behind the correct role of model Esper and perfect cop hides Dishonest Abe, a parody of Abraham Lincoln. Usually, Dishonest Abe takes the lead in conversation; with Powell finding himself lying in earnest to anybody, for the sake of just amusing himself. This characterization may be unconvincing, but it serves to represent two things: First, as perhaps the best mind on the planet, Powell finds himself constantly alone, and must invent games to keep himself amused. Second, this character trait shows that both Reich and Powell are exceptional, and that people such as they always must violate society's rules in order to improve it.
Women characters are belittled, somewhat; most have open sexual interest in either of the two male protagonists, which undermines their value as individual figures. Yet, this portrayal of women is typical of pulp literature stereotypes, a style that Bester adopted throughout the book.
Minor characters are similarly stereotypical, but not without artistic, literary attraction. One is Keno Quizzard, the blind albino (a motif also in The Stars My Destination), leader of an underworld organization employing gimpsters (gangsters), hired by Reich to help find Barbara d'Courtney.
Chooka Frood is a corrupt brothel keeper. She keeps a bodyguard (a possible friend-companion-lover) named Magda who has red eyes, laughs continually, dresses in leather and studs (remarkable for 1951), and is apt to attack at the slightest provocation.
Songstress Duffy Wyg& (read Wygand), the composer of the 'Tenser,' said the Tensor jingle, is portrayed as the essential "modern career woman, the virgin seductress" who seems to crave either humiliation or conquest by men, although such a woman is a staple genre character in film noir cinema and hard-boiled detective fiction, her character and presence in 1951 science fiction, are, again, remarkable.
[edit] Major themes
[edit] Stylistic methods
Foremost among the interesting stylistic methods that Alfred Bester uses are the graphologic deviations representing communication among the Esper characters. The range of graphologic layouts utilised represents the human psyche's chaotic nature, and how Espers have learned to structure their thoughts for smooth telepathic communication. The Espers use different patterns in structuring their thoughts, (and also for their own entertainment). For example, when a telepath party begins, Espers' thoughts are represented chaotically, in unbound form:
Frankly Canapes? Why
Ellery Thanks delicious yes,
I Mary, they're Tate,
Don't I'm
Think treating
You'll Canapes? D'Courtney.
We Be I
brought Working Expect
Galen For him
along Monarch in
to Much Canapes? town
help him celebrate Longer. shortly.
He's The
just taken his Guild
is exam
just and
about been
to classed
Once the party is properly structured, however, we see the group force themselves to play their thoughts into a cohesive pattern:
Sorry, Lincoln. We weren't party-minded Enough Tate thought Esper but Alan Men I'm Seaver remaining Not that a Pres was ever elected still unmarried
This pattern is the 'simple basket weave', but others exist. Mathematical curves, Music, and Architectural design also are mentioned in the same passage. The Espers also use this technique in playing simple logic games and in creating pattern puzzles. An example of this is the Einstein rebus word picture of an eyeball floating in a stein; (an eye in a stein -> eye in stein -> Einstein).
[edit] Allusions and references to actual history, geography, and current science
The action occurs in New York City, years after a major war left some remarkable geographic features. One is the Bomb Inlet, but the most bizarre is the place called 99 Bastion West Side, a mega-brothel built where a nuclear explosion melted thousands of tons of glass and ceramics in an underground chamber. The result is a multi-colored, singing, solid lake which owner, Chooka Frood, uses as part of a mystic fortune-telling act. It is there that Barbara d'Courtney eventually is found, in a zombie-like mental state, participating in the fortune telling act. The building above is a three dimensional maze of odd-sized chambers variously used for pursuing vice and for evading pursuing police.
This combination of low-life characters in wrecked, run-down places is a reason The Demolished Man is regarded as prototypical of the literary style now known as cyberpunk.
On the other side of the coin, there is much high technology in evidence, though it is used to propel the plot in comic-book fashion, regardless of the long-term narrative consequences; thus the fast space-ships, artificial gravity, Neuron Scrambler guns, aerial cars known as Jumpers, force-shields, "temporal phase" technology used to hide a safe, and so forth and so on. The weapon used for the murder, however, is had from that most ancient establishment, the pawnshop, run by an ostracized telepath who made the mistake of breaking Guild rules for money offered by Ben Reich.
In a prescient joke, for the 1950s, it is revealed that annoyingly catchy jingles are nicknamed Pepsis, though no one can remember why.
[edit] References
- ^ The two corporations use a set of 4 letter codes; D'Courtney replies WWHG, which according to the codebook listed in the opening pages, means 'Acceptance', but Reich simply assumes it means rejection.
- Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd.. pp. 593–594.
- Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 43. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
[edit] External links
- The Demolished Man publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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