Book Review: The Demolished man by Alfred Bester

 The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester was first published in 1953 and was honored as the first ever Hugo Award winner. 

   I decided last year that it would be fun to read all the Hugo winning novels and sort of explore how Sci Fi has expanded and changed over the years. 

I did not expect to have such trouble with The Demolished Man.  It took me 5 months, and a Staycation to finally conquer this one. 

I didn't particularly dislike it, but I REALLY  did not love it. 

In summary Ben is a paranoid business owner who's haunted by a recurring nightmare of a faceless man.  Even in a world full of telepathic people, he has not been able to conquer this dream. Ben decides a business rival is the cause of this and determines to kill him. This is a tall order, as - with the advent of telepathic people, most crimes are stopped before they occur as someone reads the thoughts before the actions can occur.  Bester gives us an inverted police procedural - the reader knows the crime and the perpetrator and follows the investigation with that knowledge, so there's no guessing here, just following along as detectives try to figure it all out, and the perpetrator takes evasive maneuvers!

  

    I feel pretty lukewarm about this novel. I can see how, at the time, it would be quite the rage.  Bester is clearly influenced by current events and trends.  he describes the paranoia that accompanied the Second Red Scare- which he was living through.  Characters all spend quite a lot of time, encouraging others to "peep" them telepathically to see they are on the up and up. As the novel moves along,  characters go through various, new-fangled rebirth treatments, which reflet the way psychoanalysis was growing and changing in the 1950's under the influences of Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erikson, theorists who focused on the "unconcious mind" and placed strong value on dream analysis. 

A murder does occur, and the perpetrator of the crime is finally caught - using a variety of telepathic tools, and a computer which takes up a lot of one room! Bester certainly did predict a time when AI might feature heavily in society- as he describes a computer that's fed the evidence and spits out a conclusion that the police need to follow. The perpetrator is then scheduled for "Demolition"  But demolition isn't exactly what it seems, and Bester seems to advocate for rehabilitation and or  encouragement of those who are going against societal norms, stating,

“If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.”
― Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

Of course, this quote - indicates that if someone isn't like others, they need to somehow be changed back into something acceptable - a "Plus-Value" so I'm not sure if he realized that while he's advocating for people to not be sheep- he's also advocating for them to actually just be "Plus value" people - so intelligent, controllable/useful sheep maybe? 

 In 1950's America,  conformity was so valued, that I think even suggesting someone who went against society was above average, was somewhat radical. Reading it today, I'm wondering exactly what changing a person to a Plus value means.  This book has never (as far as my research could find) been a banned book and it does not seem to really challenge the order of the world.  Or at least, not in a glaringly obvious way like the 1954 winner of the Hugo awards has done for decades. 

  Why am I so lukewarm on this?  

Bester - really transposed 1950's roles on to the women in the novel, wholeheartedly and without any second thought.  His descriptions and remarks on their physical appearance is not something that would be accepted today. And there's a sequence where a young woman undergoes a rebirthing process, spends a lot of time calling an adult man "Dada"  while the adult man encourages her to sit on his lap etc. Once she emerges from her infant and toddler stage, he feels he can then approach her for an adult relationship.  It just gave me the ICK.   I read in a review that this relationship was supposed to help the reader feel kindly towards that man, but it just made me glad I was not a woman in the 1950's. Just WOW.  All of the other women are given similar treatment and always described in terms of physical attributes.  It was - errr- not very forward thinking of this Science Fiction writer. Science Fiction really has a reputation especially in these early days, and indeed I can see how it shaped and reinforces beliefs about women. When I first read Heinlin, I felt like  his Sci Fi wasn't that good, but he really pinned how men felt about women in that time period. 

  As a side note, I was highly amused that while Bester could imagine a time when video calling would become important, his characters were constantly dashing from their rockets- to a phone booth to make these Video calls. I think I might trade video calling for literal rockets?  But here we are. 

I have finished the first Hugo award winner, and I am delighted to move on ,and very very pleased to not have to read that again!