Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
Mar. 1st, 2012 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stapsreadsMy obsession with The Count of Monte Cristo continues unchecked. First The Stars' Tennis Balls, and now this. The vengeful antihero in this case is Gulliver Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd class. He is taking revenge on the ship that passed him by, leaving him to die in space. If you enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo, and were able to reach beyond the troubling clichés in that, and/or if you are a devotee of the golden age of sci-fi, you'll like this.
Worth reading not just as a curiosity for devotees of Dumas, but also as a sci-fi classic. A sci-fi classic of the fifties, mind, with all that implies - i.e. lots of bits that make me cringe, and some that are just plain nasty - but also wacky imagination, wackier characters, and a reader who's assumed to be intelligent. An implied rape scene (actually, I was rather more disturbed by Neil Gaiman's foreword, regretting that the reader had to do more work in the fifties) and a society in which women are kept behind closed doors - but several well-drawn female characters and an explicit acknowledgement of how broken that society is. Some terrible racial stereotyping, a disabled antagonist... it's of its time, yes. Problematic. But when it wasn't doing that, I did enjoy it.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7155977/
Worth reading not just as a curiosity for devotees of Dumas, but also as a sci-fi classic. A sci-fi classic of the fifties, mind, with all that implies - i.e. lots of bits that make me cringe, and some that are just plain nasty - but also wacky imagination, wackier characters, and a reader who's assumed to be intelligent. An implied rape scene (actually, I was rather more disturbed by Neil Gaiman's foreword, regretting that the reader had to do more work in the fifties) and a society in which women are kept behind closed doors - but several well-drawn female characters and an explicit acknowledgement of how broken that society is. Some terrible racial stereotyping, a disabled antagonist... it's of its time, yes. Problematic. But when it wasn't doing that, I did enjoy it.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7155977/
