Rating: 
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: Lacks the humor and inspiration of "Stars My Destination", but still has some neat ideas. There are some disappointments, for the Powell character has an internal subplot that's kind of left daggling, and the resolution seems a little out of place and (annoyingly) naive. Probably suffers from ultra-hype, if you go into it with exceedingly high expectations (ala "The Greatest Science Fiction novel ever!!!") you'll be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking classic SF
Review: Seminal. Will leave you wondering exactly what the mind is. Does it represent your true self or just what others think you are? Is it everything you perceive as reality or really nothing at all? I couldn't sleep after I finished this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good, the only thing I have to add is......
Review: The book says that in this future no-one is murdered, but that means those who are murdered are nobodys. (sort of like in the hitchhiker's guide "there were no poor, in least none worth talking about" I'm paraphrasing of course.) Once I realized that murders of the unimportant occurred in this future it was less confusing. I might have given it 5 if I'd realized that earlier. The modified assumption I gave will hopefully help.
Rating: 
Summary: Read his other book instead...
Review: After reading Bester's other book (The Starts My Destination) I quickly snatched this one up, only to be disappointed. The shift in focus that occurs about one-third of the way through the book was not smooth, and there was way too much Fruedian psychobabble in the book, Granted, this book was written during the time when that was chic, but it really doesn't carry over well at all to our time. The ending started to pick up the book a bit, but then the last chapter, like so many others, was quite disappointing.Read it if you are in the mood for a mediorce classic, but if you are trying to catch up on the true classics, skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Good crime story & science fiction story.
Review: It was good & had a fair amount of twists. At first it works better as a crime story then anything. Freudianism is used in the same way psychohistory is used in Foundation, that is as an imaginary science to further the plot. I think he believed in Freudianism, but the fact that I don't doesn't affect anything. I don't think it's near my favorites, but I'm a bit jaded right now so maybe I'll reread it when I'm out of that funk.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking
Review: I first read this as a teenager, from a compilation of sci-fi novels given me for my birthday. I still remember being compelled to read it until the last possible moment before my eyes finally gave in to sleep, every night, for a week, until I finished it. Sometime in the intervening years, I must have mislaid the book, but I still get flashes from it now and then - "Tenser, said the Tensor, Tenser, said the Tensor, Tension, Apprehension, and Dissention have begun!". Despite several hunts for the book, I could never find it - but an idle browse on Amazon.com, and four weeks later, I just received my copy. I can't wait. There's very little I can add to what the other reviewers have said, except to say that I'm not someone who ever really 'raves' about anything, retaining instead a healthy scepticism; that is, unless I find something truly astonishing, truly a seminal work of art. The Demolished Man may have flaws - the characterisation isn't of the highest order - but the complete realisation of this future world, the utter imaginative force that brings ESPers to life, the incredible portrayal of psychic conversation (it really does do something to your head), all make this a novel with few equals, and a sci-fi novel unrivalled. Buy it, borrow it, steal it, just make sure you read it at least once in this lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Intense
Review: Bester's writings are like a mob enforcer, they jump out of the page, grab you by the neck and the words just fly down your optic nerve. There is an energy in his style which is incredible. Then there is the beautiful typographies used to show the conversations between telepaths. Buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING
Review: One of the greatest scince fiction novels of all time. Intense plot, intense characters, intense, deep book. Buy it, read it, love it.
Rating:
Summary: Good science fiction, not great science fiction.
Review: I welcomed the re-issue of this book as it gave me a chance to read what has been touted as one of the truly great works of science fiction. With these expectations, I could only be let down. It has a complex plot (although it seems simple enough at first), and some of the surprises are truly masterful. I particularly liked the description of demolition. The best part of the novel is a long, psychic vs. normal police investigation where Bester has two characters handicapped by aspects of their society place a wonderfully written chess game where the final stake is the oft-mentioned demolition. But, overall the book has some failings.
A lack of character
The characters of the book are too simple and too Freudian. Lincoln Powell is by far the most interesting, but the alter ego that Bester sets up for Powell never really reaches the climax that it deserves. Ben Reich starts off as your simple, marxist caricature of a rich man, and really has little room to grow, either into an interesting character or a truly hateable antagonist.
Sometimes science gets in the way of science fiction ...
and this is a classic case. It is hard to read this book because the science is so dated. It is a hardcore Freudian read, and the characters are strictly governed by Id, Ego, Superego, and refer to these as truths. Although Freud is very influential in the way we think about thinking, Bester uses ideas about disorders that were fresh at the time, but have not aged well and have become dated.
Buy the book
Go ahead and buy The Demolished Man. It truly is an influential book. Gibson echoes many of the themes and characters, and the television show, Babylon 5 has a whole organization structured around its Espers Guild. Read it for what it is, a truly influential work of science fiction from sci-fi's early days. Do not look for it to speak too much for today's society, and don't look for it to keep to the standards of current masters such as Clarke, Gibson, and Robinson (Its lack of characterization makes it even have trouble standing up to past masters like Heinlein). It is good, enjoyable, fast paced science fiction. It doesn't, though, leave the reader with either the social questions or the post-technological awe of great science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Blind-sided from the past
Review: I had always considered myself well versed in the pantheon
of classic science fiction until one day one of my 7th grade students
(the son of an editor) put this book in my hands and told me that I had to read it.
On a two hour flight to Knoxville, my ideas of modern science fiction
were obliterated, much as the title would indicate.
Because of the telepathic talents of some of humanty, murder
has become an unpleasant detail of human history. Cooperate giant Ben
Reich is about to change all of that. Tormented by both his dreams and his
rival, Reich decides to end both the man with no face and D'Courtney
with one brutal act that will shock society to it's knees.
Then begins the cat a mouse game between Reich and
telepathic policeman Lincoln Powell. Have fun figuring out
which man is the cat!
Bester paints Reich as the solitary genius
with such skill that he is compellingly sympathetic while
still being horrifically repugnant in his motivations and actions.
As the story progressed, I found myself wishing for the coldly
calculating Reich to succeed in his rather brutal scheme
and get away with it, in spite of myself. At he same time, Powell proved to be
as admirable as his adversary by balancing his own intellegence with
an equally ruthless sense of honor.
Add to the detailed insight into the mind and character of Reich
a rich tapestry of the society that telepathy has produced and you get a
view of future history that is both optimistic and unsettling.
In spite of it's rather short length, "The Demolished Man" is very complete in
the details of life and society in future earth. There is no other
book that could be the first Hugo Award winner. I can only thank my student
for openning my eyes to this major icon of Science fiction literature
|
