The Stars My Destination is classic sci-fi and proto-cyberpunk

This might feel like a somewhat obvious recommendation to some, but it flew under my radar until now. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (originally published as Tiger! Tiger! in the UK) is a 1956 sci-fi novel that some have cited as a precursor to cyberpunk. It’s a work I admit I have some conflicted feelings about, but one I think is well worth reading if you consider yourself a fan of sci-fi. It’s also well worth seeking out a physical copy, something I wish I had known before I started reading it in the objectively inferior e-book form that can’t capture the ergodic elements of the climax.

It’s hard to explain the plot of The Stars My Destination. At its core, it’s the story of a man who vows revenge on a spaceship — an inanimate object — after he is left for dead in the wreckage of another ship. But that doesn’t capture any of what the book is actually about. The plot moves so quickly, so much happens in this relatively short 250-page novel, that it’s difficult to keep up. It’s either a riveting breakneck thrillride or a chaotic jumble of barely coherent events, and I’m still not sure which.

The world laid out in its pages is imaginative, lived in, and shockingly prescient in many ways. The book starts by introducing jaunting, essentially teleportation through sheer force of mind, which has completely disrupted the socioeconomic order. The inner planets are at war with the outer satellites, and the world is largely run by dynastic corporations whose loyalty is only to their bottom line. The wealthy heads of these corporations flaunt their wealth, isolate themselves from the common people, and demonstrate their superiority through the use of obsolete technologies like phones, trains, and horse-drawn carriages.

The story follows Gully Foyle in his quest for vengeance after a ship called Vorga ignores his pleas for help as he floats helplessly in the wreckage of the Nomad. His journey takes several unpredictable turns as his plans are repeatedly thwarted. When we first meet Foyle, he’s an uneducated man with no ambition, no future, just coasting through life. But over the course of the book, he grows, learns, and transforms from a violent brute operating on pure impulse to a calculating, almost religious figure with cybernetic augmentations.

It all builds to a climax that is a breathtaking depiction of synesthesia. It’s one of the first depictions of the conditions in popular literature, in which a person’s senses become crossed, allowing them to taste sounds or see smells.

The book has its flaws. Unsurprisingly, being from 1956, the way it handles race and treats women can be problematic. There’s even a sexual assault fairly early in the book that is treated more like an inconvenience or immature mischief, rather than a barbaric crime. And there is a romantic subplot shoehorned into the backend of the book that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.