This may seem like a somewhat obvious recommendation to some, but it was under my radar until now. Alfred Bester’s stars my destination (Originally published as) Leopard! Leopard! in the UK) is a 1956 sci-fi novel cited by some as a precursor to cyberpunk. I admit that this is a work I have some conflicted feelings about, but I think it’s worth a read if you consider yourself a sci-fi fan. It’s also worth seeking out a physical copy, something I wish I’d known before I started reading this as an objectively inferior e-book that can’t capture the disgusting elements of the climax.
It is difficult to explain the plot of stars my destination. At its core, it is the story of a man who swears revenge on a spaceship – an inanimate object – after he is left for dead in the wreck of another ship. But that doesn’t reveal what the book is really about. The plot moves so fast, so much happens in this relatively short novel of 250 pages that it’s hard to keep up. It’s either an interesting thrilling journey or a chaotic mix of barely coherent events, and I’m still not sure which.
The world depicted in its pages is imaginative, vibrant and surprising in many ways. The book begins with the introduction of jaunting, essentially teleportation through the power of the mind, which has completely disrupted the socioeconomic system. The inner planets are at war with the outer satellites, and the world is largely run by dynastic corporations whose loyalty extends only to their bottom line. The wealthy heads of these corporations flaunt their wealth, isolate themselves from ordinary people, and demonstrate their superiority through the use of obsolete technologies such as phones, trains, and horse-drawn carriages.
The story follows Gully Foyle’s quest for vengeance when a ship called the Vorga ignores his pleas for help as he floats helplessly to the wreck of the Nomad. His journey takes many unexpected turns as his plans fail again and again. When we first meet Foyle, he’s an uneducated man with no ambitions, no future, just living life. But over the course of the book, he grows, learns, and transforms from a predatory animal acting on pure impulse into a calculating, almost religious man with cybernetic enhancements.
It all builds to a climax that is a breathtaking depiction of synesthesia. It is one of the first depictions of conditions in popular literature in which a person’s senses are heightened, allowing them to taste sounds or see smells.
There are flaws in the book. Not surprisingly, being from 1956, the way it handles race and treats women can be problematic. There is even a mention of sexual assault quite early in the book, which is treated as an inconvenience or immature prank rather than a barbaric crime. And there’s a romantic subplot added to the backend of the book that makes no sense at all.
<a href