FEBRUARY READ - SPOILERS - The Stars My Destination

Here be spoilers!

I'm about 10% of the way in on my ebook copy, though that includes Gaiman's introduction and all- Gully remains on the Nomad, and Varga has just come and gone.

One thing I'm wondering right now is how exactly the prologue relates to the epilogue- initially I assumed that the prologue was background material, but if that's the case and jaunting has already changed everything, how come Gully is risking his life in five-minute increments walking around Nomad instead of jaunting back and forth instantaneously to get air tanks and food? The Merchant Marine record listed SKILLS: NONE, does that include not jaunting? I expect things will become clearer given time, so I am patiently waiting for context...

Gully's dialect reminds me of the Belter dialect in Melisa Michaels' Skyrider series. In that series, however, it's used as a marker of origin and Belter subculture, but from the introduction I suspect it's being used in this book as a marker of low intelligence and ignorance as opposed to "proper" speech, cf Pygmalion- I'll be keeping an eye on that out of curiosity. The other thing I'm reminded of is the general space industrial grimness of many of Cherryh's novels, eg Rimrunners- I wonder if there was some influence there.

The book is, overall, holding my interest quite well at this point, and I'm curious to see where it's going to go.

No, Gully jaunts when he gets to Earth. I'm still not clear on how installing a maze in your house is supposed to keep people from jaunting in.

I thought Bester did a pretty decent job of figuring out what some of the implications of jaunting might be. There needs to be some kind of a way to keep people from jaunting in just anywhere, and I haven't thought of anything better than the mazes. I think the idea was that you had to know how you got there, or exactly where you were, or something like that. Without such a limitation, you'd have complete chaos, rich people having their own private armies/bodyguards/etc. Apparently he thought that mass transportation would become unnecessary, although I would think there might be a class of people who couldn't jaunte, or couldn't afford to learn how to go everywhere that they want to go. I was bothered a bit more on this re-read than I was as a teenager by the idea that the women have to be protected more than the men, causing a regression of social roles; I guess we have to cut him some slack based on when he was writing, and he did have some intelligent and active female characters.

The first time that I read the book, I didn't particularly like the ending. I thought Gully was being consigned to stay with Joseph's people forever. But of course he could jaunte elsewhere when he decided to, right? Did you assume that?

I finished this tonight but it is late so just posting this to keep thread clearly visible.

Another thought: Foyle is in the grand tradition of protagonists who are being manipulated by powers above the stage. Similar to Card's Ender Wiggin or Wolfe's Severian. When we learn this near the end of TSMD, I remember being disappointed that Bester had not left any clues that would have enabled us to discern this. Or did he? Did you see any indication of this manipulation during the course of the story? What were the clues?

I just finished the book last night and, given the ending, the question in #2 about whether Foyle can jaunt is pretty funny.

I couldn't buy the transformation of Gully Foyle to Geoffrey Fourmyle in Part 2. He went from someone with no intellectual curiosity to someone who could banter with the top businessmen and legal minds on the planet without giving himself away. It just doesn't seem plausible.

#8 I know what you mean, but when one accepts jaunting as part of the story...

>8 jjwilson61: I think there's an implicit amount of time elapsed there, during which he put part of his money to use to obtain the opportunities for education he was too poor and unmotivated to pursue earlier, as well as undergo full-body cybernetic enhancement.
Now he has THE _M_otivation, blowing up Vorga (which will see adjustments as he goes through further learning and growth).

It's a big theme of the book I think that he, and possibly many others, aren't intrinsically dumb brutes but are left in this state by external and internal circumstances.

Obvious parallel with the Count of Monte-Cristo too, of course.

I'm disappointed to say that my enjoyment of this book keeps decreasing as I go along... I'm about 37% in according to my ereader, so coming up fairly fast on the end of the first part.

I'm increasingly irritated that the rules for jaunting keep changing, and in poorly explained ways.

In the prologue, it was laid out simply: concentrate, visualize, and go. A jaunter "had to visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to get him there." That's it.

But then there's that whole chapter about knowing the "jaunte coordinates," comprised of "Location, Elevation, Situation," but later we find out* that you only need to see a place in person to be able to jaunte to it: a 3-D photograph won't work** but "a glance through a window or door might be enough to enable a man to memorize the L-E-S coordinates of a place."

This would seem to rather defeat the purposes of all of those labyrinths, if someone could just see the building from a distance and jaunte there.

And then, once Gully is imprisoned underground, we find out that "no patient has ever succeeded in getting his bearings and learning the jaunte co-ordinates of the black hospital depths"- concealing the jaunte co-ordinates a person is currently at is enough to prevent somebody from jaunting away. (It's either implied or stated that this is how the labyrinths work in a previous scene as well- people get lost in them, then they can just get picked up by security because they can't jaunte away.)

It's like the evil twin of the deus ex machina- diabolus ex machina, maybe- where instead of things suddenly going right without foreshadowing because the rules of the universe change, the characters should logically be able to get out of a situation- but wait, there are additional previously unmentioned and unimplied difficulties! It wouldn't be so frustrating if Gully's successes weren't by equally extreme coincidences such as, I don't know, construction workers using a sledgehammer to do something in a sensitive area in a prison where dangerous, violent criminals are passing through- so Gully can just grab the sledgehammer and go to town, presto!- or the dead end that he and Jiz run to happening to be a hollow wall that leads into a larger underground cavern that leads to the outside (and that unlikely exit or surrounding terrain isn't monitored at all!) or "oh no, they have a super listening device, so you'd better shut up laughing so loudly, Jiz, girl" but the super listening device evidently couldn't pick up the sound of Gully smashing through a brick wall with a sledgehammer.

I mean come on...

* The whole chapter really didn't work for me- Gully was able to find out enough to blackmail everyone between him and Presteign... er, how exactly? Don't worry about that, it happened off-screen, but look, he raped the pretty black jaunting teacher- he's edgy! and amoral!

** This is the kind of arbitrary limitation I'm inclined to accept in fantasy magic systems, but I expect more than "it won't work" in a work ostensibly based in science where we've seen people expounding in detail on the mechanisms in the prologue and in the L-E-S chapter.

And the ending is just bizarre. Our hero gets a hold of this substance that will cause a nuclear explosion if someone just thinks 'boom' at it and he decides it should belong to the people and throws chunks of it to crowds all over the world. And this must be a good thing because in one of his abortive trips to the future the women he wronged have forgiven him and tell him that the future is a paradise.

It's like Bester was arguing in the 50s that everyone in the US and Russia should be given their own red button to launch the nukes.

A slightly jumbled set of observations / gut reactions as I've just finished this...

I'm becoming resigned to the fact I never enjoy classic scifi because of the prevailing gender attitudes of the time of writing (and the casual racism / colonialism / etc), but I was grinding my teeth by the end - was there a single scene in which the women didn't either cry or react hysterically to something? Jisbella apparently becomes a criminal because she's smart, capable, and angry about the role women have been reduced to - but she never objects to Gully calling her 'girl' throughout, is utterly useless during the escape sequence, and promptly fixates on him romantically even though - which is Stockholm Syndrome at best. Poor Robin gets an even rougher deal, being randomly hampered in her talent, orphaned, raped and then suckered into working for/with her rapist. They are the moral voices in the rather forced final sequence, but Gully still tears them apart (I have as many issues with 'if I do what you say is ethical, will you put yourself back into jail?' as an argument as I do with 'the Occcupy movement can't be protesting inequitable distribution of wealth, they're drinking lattes').

There are some interesting themes and observations here for the time - I reread Fahrenheit 451 recently, and was shocked to realise how much I'd forgotten in terms of the accuracy of Bradbury's foresight (not least because some of those things hadn't yet come true when I first read it - but now have very close parallels). Similarly, Bester needled in on the role and behaviour of mega-corporations, and amoral management for profit; the exaggerated unreality in which Presteign lives as a king in his own domain doesn't seem so fantastic (possibly my recent reading of the The Goldfinch with it's negative portrayal of the divide between normal life and that of the super-rich is colouring my judgement here); similarly, the new year's eve celebrations - jaunting from one party to the next - all ring true. However, I didn't feel there was any exploration of how the majority live - Bester gives us a glimpse of one extreme, but not of the implications (although the fact men allow themselves to be cut into Mr Prestos etc, losing their identity to further their careers, implies it can't be all that great).

I didn't care for the random cry at the end (Yang-Yeovil? Dagenham?) damning scientists for progress. Along with gender roles, this is a bugbear of mine. Somehow they skim over that Presteign commissioned PyrE (even though he's demanding the return of his property); suddenly it's the scientists' fault.

And I'm firmly with the WTF crowd on jaunting. I'll buy that 'a complete understanding of your destination' can translate as 'coordinates' (location / elevation / situation), and I understand that a maze is meant to confuse your senses so that you don't know precisely where you are - so you can't jaunt in or out again. I'll buy that if you wake up in a cave, you don't know where you are and you can't jaunt out. But given that context, you can train yourself to track changes in elevation / direction through a maze (train with a blindfold - it's amazing what you start to pick up), and the implication is that for those who care to, this is in fact true (the number of people who jaunt in and out of the Star Chamber). So actually mazes keep the common man out, but are no real barrier to spies, assassins or dedicated thieves at all. So what's the point? If your home had no windows, the common man couldn't jaunt in anyway - so simply having one well-guarded door and some big door-men would achieve the same ends just as effectively (but, I suppose, without such conspicuous waste of effort, which does appear to be half the point).

What this doesn't explain is how Gully jaunts all over Terra and Mars - are we to assume he's travelled extensively on both planets, to have such broad knowledge of public stages and private sites? At this point there's no suggestion that he's doing anything unusual, so presumably so. This being the case - if you can only go somewhere you've been before - why exactly has the transport industry collapsed entirely? You still can't get from one city to another without having a means of transport the first time - so there is still a role for either public or private transport. Similarly - there's a reference to women living in rooms without doors or windows - so how do they (or their 'intimate family') get in there in the first place? Are the rooms built around them? Are they bricked in?

Ultimately, my real problem throughout is that I don't believe in Gully himself. I can't relate to such over-the-top drive for revenge, or accept that the ends excuse the means in pursuing it. He's an animal, and whilst I recognise the thread of his education in stages and I think there's probably quite a bit to unpack in this (coupled with his impassioned rant about forcing all common men to take responsibility and allowing all to become thinking / educated / engaged), the packaging really puts me off.

...and I think one reason I'm always deflated by classic scifi is that in my final analysis, it's always the period in which it was written that lets it off the hook. There's only so far one can imagine, this logic implies; and I accept this for all it frustrates me.

>12 jjwilson61: I think this is exactly what Bester was arguing - it's not for governments and corporations to make the decision to hit the red button. Everyone who has a stake should have a say.

...but this felt like a moral tacked on to the end of the story to me (not a driving message throughout)?

Just starting part two... I was willing to give Bester "Jaunte" for "jaunt," but "Four Mile Circus" having an etymology separate from "Fourmyle" is asking a bit much. It's showing to me that this was written as a four-part serial, I think- it's like one small arc that ended with Jiz seeing his face, then a timeskip, then another small arc that ended with the recovery of Nomad, now a timeskip...

>13 imyril: I've only skimmed your post since I've not yet finished the book, but I look forward to revisiting it later. I did have the same thought that it would have been unlikely that public transportation would have been abolished- much more likely that it would have merely decreased things like congestion from commuters, who would jaunte back and forth to work instead of driving.

So far, the story seemed like it would have been pretty much the same if jaunting was left out (especially with the characters continually in situations where it won't work), so I started wondering if there was another reason for its inclusion. Your point about imperfect extrapolation made me curious, and considering the book was in the 1950s, I looked up the dates...

This book began serialization in October of 1956, after the United States Interstate Highway System was established in June of the same year. It's interesting to think of the book in that context, and wonder if Bester was using a science fictional device to try to predict the outcome of a large number of people gaining a lot more personal mobility, and travel between cities becoming much easier- so many small things came out of automotive culture in the US in the 1950s that seem missing in the jaunting future: fast food, shopping malls, suburbs, competitive automobile racing... not in general people building labyrinths in front of their houses to keep out an influx of people, but doesn't that make more sense when you consider someone driving from point to point than someone visualizing and blipping from point to point, anywhere they could see through a window?

I'm not sure it explains enough of the irregularities to be a real allegory, though.

14> I hadn't really considered jaunting as an allegory for cheap transport. Although we were discussing this last night - I realised that as you appear to be limited in what you can carry when you jaunt, transport can't have collapsed as you'd still need to transport goods (although in the 50s there would have been less international trade than now I guess, so this might have been something Bester didn't really consider - in spite of his trans-solar-system trade network).

Food for thought though - gridlock during a mad dash out of town suddenly seems like a much better proposition than exploding on a public stage :)

I look forward to your thoughts when you get to the end! You're spot on about the 4 mini-arcs - I hadn't realised it was serialized, but that makes perfect sense now.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

This book was published the year before I was born. I am 56. Of course the story is going to have some dated elements. It is older than the space race. It predates Sputnik. It pre-dates all the wonderful footage we have seen of astronauts and cosmonauts walking in space or floating through the International Space Station. Of course Bester was going to get some practical things wrong.

When I read an old book I read it taking the time of its writing into consideration. I can make allowances for the dated elements of such a story and I can find these quaint as they give clues to the contemporary social norms of the time. The type of things I can overlook include the referring to rocket boosters as jets, the concept of “corking” one’s spacesuit to keep the air in, and the unrealistic representation of people doing work in zero gravity. As I say, I can make allowances for these, as long as the story told has some other interesting elements such as a sociological statement I will suspend my incredulity.

As someone once said, “Science Fiction is about the present”. Bester was obviously making statements about issues he noticed at the time he was writing The Stars My Destination. He also included, albeit tangentially, indications of how he envisaged the future of multinational organisations, amongst other things.


Globalisation is obviously fully established in Bester’s world for the novel. Thanks to “jaunting” the big corporations can have a presence all over the world without too much trouble. It would not be difficulty to draw a parallel between the capability jaunting provides the corporation and the capabilities now available to the business world in terms of Internet communications and the relatively cheap availability of flight connections to virtually anywhere one wanted to go.

One thing I believe he failed to predict was the disruptive nature of new technology and the growth of new companies and organisations and the decline in the power of older companies. In The Stars My Destination one of the powerful clans is Kodak. If upstarts are to make a place for themselves they have to buy, bully or bluff their way into one of the existing big organisations and build their empire from within their adopted clan. There appears to be no room for building a new organisation from scratch.

He does not bring in government politicians but represents authority through the security agency, with Y’ang Yeovil in control, who also appears to have a global remit.

I perceive Bester’s message to be one that is anti-concentrated power, i.e. he pushes the idea of a more egalitarian society with everyone able to decide things for themselves. I felt his approach towards the end of the book was a bit preachy and a recipe for anarchy which would not really produce the best results for citizens and society.

Gully Foyle’s rise to riches and development of style and intellect would indicate Bester having a belief in positive thinking and that if people are sufficiently motivated and provided with the opportunity, the sky is their limit. Gully’s case is a bit extreme, but it is just a story.

I saw a parallel with Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 in relation to the evolution of man through the growth in his mental agility and capability.

His portrayal of women would not be regarded as very PC in today’s world, but he did have a few very powerful women, but they did work and live in a relatively restrictive environment.

I got the impression that Bester did not find the world a place full of nice people. He certainly did not populate this novel with any nice people. I think he wanted to indicate that we are all flawed and he did that by having fairly unlikeable people in the novel. Gully is particularly obnoxious but I see the end of the novel as indicating that Gully was a good person at heart and that he strived for salvation and redemption for his transgressions against the world. I suppose some people would draw parallels between Gully Foyle and Christ in terms of his taking on the sins of the world. Regardless of that, there were no nice people to be found.

I think Bester was foretelling the possibilities of cybernetics with the enhancing technology implanted in Foyle’s body to give him superhuman capability.


What did I take from the book?:
Nobody is perfect; the establishment is always there and it is driven by the wishes of the big corporations; money corrupts; the little people always suffer; it is hard to change the world.

I think the world Bester created in this story has many parallels to the present day.

One interesting thing is that the SF element depends not on hardware or technology, but on developing an existing capability of the human mind. Gully does use technology to make himself into what he becomes, but the essential SF element of the book is jaunting. Agree?

If a book is called a classic, it typically does something for the first time or influences later works. What works show the influence of this book? For example, is Billly Pilgrim a descendant of Mr. Foyle?

>17 Jim53: Teleportation is the salient "what if?" / speculative fiction element, but it could be explored just as well in a fantasy or pre-space age alternate history, the space age background would be what anchors it with science-fiction IMHO.

I think it can be regarded as a fairly early bit of cyberpunk, and shows some elements that tend to be pretty universal in later works of the subgenre :

Cybernetic body enhancements.
Eeevul megacorporations pulling strings (and small guy(s) trying to give them the finger more or less successfully, or trying to live at the margins of whatever dominant system/society they've created).
Black and gray morality.

I had a hard time with this one. As someone else stated there is not one single likeable character, and I thought they were all cartoonishly portrayed. I can't understand why Bester relied so heavily on things like telepathy and jaunting for communicating and as the main mode of transport when envisioning the future. Seriously? Even the greatest secret weapon of the day has to be triggered telepathically. Come on...

I agree the women were all pitifully fleshed out. Though I will admit being a one-way telepath would be pretty useless. I did find Robin gift/curse quite amusing. LOL

And the writing style... UGH. I'm glad I read it, but I won't be touching anything else of Bester's.

Just realized this thread is not showing up as Conversation for The Stars My Destination and I think it might be because no one actually added a touchstone yet.

So I'm adding one. ;o)

I'm about a third of the way in and am enjoying it. Far more for the story and ideas than the characters, like most of you.

I'm having a hard time summarising my feelings about this book. I read it quickly, devouring the story, so didn't notice most of the discrepancies that others pointed out. However as I was reading I knew that if I stopped to think I would find things that didn't add up. I liked the little details that were almost thrown in in passing, such as "Mr Presto", and the New Year's Eve spent jaunting around the world was very well done. I agree that the characters were not the most likeable bunch, although I did like poor Robin Wednesbury. Although the women were certainly problematic, sadly they were better than those in other SF of this period that I've read (eg. Foundation or Ringworld). I'm glad we read this because despite its faults I did basically enjoy the book and will read The demolished man which is sitting on Mount Tbr.

Yeah, I was thinking about looking back at TDM to see if I had the same sort of changed reactions to it that I did (with the help of y'all) to TSMD.

The way I understood jaunting, it was something humanity had to master, a skill that is learned, hence the fact of limits (and different categories of jaunters) AND the possibility of improvements. It wasn't something everyone did well immediately. As to mechanism, it makes sense, plot-wise, to make pinpointing the location/elevation/situation as difficult as possible. Remember that Foyle had to visit Robin's apartment and memorize it before jaunting there. He couldn't just wish-think "Robin's apartment" and visualize, say, the building, he had to have a precise image of the interior in his mind.

So, with that sort of precision being necessary, it makes sense that it wouldn't be easy jaunting just anywhere in the world, but to select points, jaunting terminals, the limited number of points one has memorized.

I can see where mazes would complicate things: the interiors look identical, i.e. someone who doesn't have the actual plan of the maze cannot know where any given point is appearing. You could picture someone's living room from a good photo, but not infer the whole maze from one segment.

I can't understand why Bester relied so heavily on things like telepathy and jaunting for communicating and as the main mode of transport when envisioning the future.

He seems to have been very interested in psychology, and them's were the times, ESP, telepathy, Eastern mysticism, pseudoscience and all that going strong.

#23

I did just that, re-read The demolished man and Stars my destination and was terribly disappointed in both. This sort of thing brings in question everything I know! BAH!

#24 - Was Suck Fairy flitting about, Lola?

Swooping like a hawk, ripping my memories to shreds! Really makes me sad a little. It's not like I read those for the first time in childhood--I read The demolished man in 2003, when I was going through some sci-fi "all time best" list (Pringle?) and filling in the titles I never got to back when I did count myself a fan (high-school). I guess the first time around one is carried away by the plot and the newness. Bester stood out as better quality, at least within the titles I was reading then, while his treatment of female characters was pretty much assumed for his era. But reading again, especially as I did, three of his books in quick succession, the less savoury traits begin to poke at you. What pleasure or entertainment there may be for me in reading this stuff is used up the first time.

I'm glad this book got a lot of conversation going! I think it's been one of the more popular ones as far as posts have been.

My micro-review:

"Considering the comments in the group read thread, I wasn't expecting to like this at all. But I was easily able to read past plot holes and product of the times sexism to enjoy the story. This despite an unlikeable protagonist. Actually, there are no real good guys here. As I've said before though, I'm all about the story and if it draws me in, like this one does, I'm good to go and The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite classics."

I think you posted that on the wrong thread.

#29 Morphidae, I think you are correct and that is a great relief as I thought I had accidently deleted the post from my own thread. Phew!

Now to transfer.

Morphy, you're right. It was a much more enjoyable read once I realize I wasn't supposed to be empathizing with anyone.

A lot of the time I can't get past unlikeable characters, but this was such a good story, it wasn't a problem.

Morphy, I pretty much had your experience with this story. I started it this morning, and finished about an hour ago. It was a fun and adventurous read, the only times it lagged for me were during the moralizing and the psychedelic moments.

I started liking the story much more when the "burning man" began appearing. And yes, I was looking for the manipulation of Foyle beyond his own revenge, especially when the bombing started to follow him, but also with all of his "coincidental" successes. I knew that the radioactive man whose name is too hard to remember how to spell was behind his jailbreak, and I really thought Jilly? Jil? I thought she was an agent of some kind, but I got that wrong. I suspected the O.S. people of using him in some way, but I couldn't see how.

Where it went wrong for me was when he started throwing the deadly thinking bombs to the general public. I work with the general public and that just seems like a very bad idea. Survival of the fittest might mean giving them something they could destroy their own selves with, but not something that could take out half a continent, possible with me on it, by just one thought. No, that is a very romantic idea from the mid-century.

As for the rest of it, I just didn't worry about it much. It's a story for fun and escape, so I don't worry about the jaunting rules and such. Same with the sexism. I'm much more critical of authors writing today.

It took my husband a month to read this. One day for me, and I'm glad it didn't take longer, because I wouldn't have had the patience for it. It is a three-star for me. One I'm glad to have read but didn't love, won't read again, and others might enjoy.

Oh, and the tie in with The Count of Monte Cristo probably made me like it and be more motivated to read it than I would have been otherwise.