The Stars My Destination

This book blew my mind! It changed my life and gave me food poisoning; well, maybe it was some lousy shrimp that did that, but it came around the same time anyhow.

I loved the initial point of revenge, how the main character was abandoned to die in a broken spaceship in the middle of nowhere. I, too, would be pissed if a ship flew by me without stopping to save my butt.

I was happy that the book also played with metaphysical notions and cranked up the ending to a glorious finish that broke from the standard good-guy wins… show more.

A novel that should be on every reader’s bookshelf, Bester’s The Stars My Destination is a dense and thought-provoking read that I found impossible to put down and frequently re-read.

The story is set during a war in the future in an era where personal teleportation (known as jaunting) is commonplace. The plot centers around Gully Foyle, a flawed anti-hero who finds himself marooned in space aboard his merchant ship, Nomad, after it’s attacked. After waiting to be rescued for six months, Foyle signals a passing ship, the Vorga, but his SOS is ignored. He immediately becomes consumed… show more.

Although it was published in 1956, The Stars My Destination reads in a modern and accessible way, with a fast-paced plot and delirious knack for creativity. Truly cosmic in scope, it offers a sci-fi spin on The Count of Monte Cristo with exquisite results. We have teleportation, space travel, a range of interesting future technology, vibrant characters, psychic powers, unique cultures, top-secret weapons… and that’s just the beginning. The book was so ahead of its time that it is still ahead of its time.

The Stars My Destination is, in my humble opinion, the absolute best stand-alone science fiction novel. Originally published as Tiger! Tiger! in 1956, this book – I don’t know why it has never been made into a movie? – is about the brute of a simple spaceman, Gully Foyle, who is completely transformed by the end of the book. You will follow Foyle and his lust for revenge from nobody to cunning calculating anti-hero wanted by everyone who is anyone, until his end revenge. Alfred Bester was another grandfather of sci-fi who writes in a traveling style catered to the… show more.

Alfred Bester, a colleague of Philip K. Dick’s, had as wild an imagination, but preferred his heroes in the Nietzchean mode. Gully Foyle, in The Stars My Destination, is a crude-speaking rogue, out to wreak his revenge on those who left him in space to die. While trying to make his way back to Earth after being marooned, one of his stops is at an asteroid inhabited by the “Scientific People.” These are descendants of lost scientists who chose to live in outer space “practicing a barbaric travesty of the scientific method they remembered from their forebears.” Foyle smashes… show more.