The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester · first published 1951
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Fast-moving golden-age science fiction built around a murder mystery, with telepathy serving as a plot device. Its inventive ideas hold up well, making it a good fit for fans of classic SF.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
In a world in which the police have telepathic powers, how do you get away with murder? Ben Reichs heads a huge 24th century business empire, spanning the solar system. He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.
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What Hacker News says
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…<---highly overlooked, predates 1984 and Brave New World But the Absolute Best would be anything by: Stanislaw Lem (Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, Solaris) Alfred Bester (The STars my Destination, The Demolished Man) or Samuel R. Delany (Babel-17, Dhalgren, Trtion, Nova) oh and Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and This Immortal are both great. Some of Philip K. Dick's stuff is great, but everyone recommends him. :)…
on “Ask YC: What's the most inspiring sci-fi book you've read?” ↗Don't forget Alfred Bester. The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are interesting precursors to Gibson. He also wrote a fantastic, underrated novel that is definitely his most cyberpunk: The Computer Connection (1975), also published as Extro. It's great fun, and at…
on “Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades” ↗…drives the middle away than this. I though completely open borders was as interesting as I found, but “change human nature to never crime” is even better. There’s a great science fiction book called “The Demolished Man” by Alfred Bester about a future society where criminals were rehabilitated rather than imprisoned.
on “Colin Kaepernick to Join Medium Board of Directors” ↗…gets copied by everyone. Isaac Asimov - Foundation (and the rest of the trilogy) Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land / Starship Troopers / The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man / The Stars My Destination Jack Vance - The Dying Earth Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / The Man in the High Castle Larry Niven - Ringworld etc. etc. A list of Hugo Award winners[1]…
on “Ask HN: What sci-fi books are you reading?” ↗Non-developer specific good sci-fi books: -Dune -Hyperion + The Fall of Hyperion -The Book Of The New Sun -Ilium + Olympos -Takeshi Kovacs trilogy -The Culture Series (meh..) -The Demolished Man More dev-oriented: -Reamde (which I hated, but I seem to be in a minority) -Neuromancer I'll always have a special place in my heart for Calculating God (not science fiction), because its the book…
on “Ask HN: Sci-Fi Books for Hackers?” ↗Also read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man where the main character comissions a songwriter to write an earworm song so that it would jam the telepaths reading his thoughts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man
on “Brains are the last frontier of privacy” ↗…readers: - Isaac Asimov (foundation trilogy, robot series, short stories compilations) - William Gibson (nauromancer, bridge trilogy) - Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination) - Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon) - Orson Scott Card (Ender’s game, Speaker for the Dead) - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and punishment, the idiot, notes from the underground…
on “Ask HN: You've got $300 to fill an empty library. What do you choose?” ↗…like telepathy, precognition, teleportation, etc. - Asimov’s Foundation series - Herbert’s Dune series - Larry Niven’s Known Space stories - Heinlein’s Stranger from a Strange Land - Alfred Bester’s Demolished Man and Tiger Tiger - Clarke’s Childhood’s End I’m sure there are more that I forgot to mention. It really did seem to be a pervasive expectation that the mind was the next frontier for seemingly magical…
on “Tomorrow people: For a century, it felt like telepathy was around the corner” ↗…legitimize the frontpage placement. Brace: These little cat-human conversation pieces embedded within remind me enormously of the telepathic conversations in Alfred Bester's mighty genre classic The Demolished Man and their special typesetting. https://speculativerhetoric.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads... https://universesofthemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/wp...
on “My Cat Mii” ↗But (for those of you who haven't read it) that summary really doesn't even hint at the novel's greatness. It just spills out cool ideas, hardly ever pausing to take a breath. Bester's The Demolished Man is also well worth mentioning. Won the very first Hugo award, still stands up well today.
on “Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read” ↗Bester is one of my favorite SF writers, and it's almost criminal how few people know about his work. In addition to The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination (the latter my all-time favorite SF novel), he also wrote probably the best science fiction short story ever written, "Fondly Fahrenheit". Bester was a master of plot, of…
on “Science fiction's dark star: Alfred Bester at 100” ↗…science fiction books that can stand alone: Asimov: The Gods Themselves Clarke: Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama Herbert: Dune, Whipping Star Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Bester: The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination (also called "Tiger, Tiger") Niven: Ringworld Niven and Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye, Footfall Gibson: Neuromancer Stephenson: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age…
on “Beginnings of Science Fiction” ↗…short stories)... I'm currently finally getting around to "The Mote In God's Eye". Further back, "Foundation" was pretty amazing, and I've a bit of a soft spot for "Childhood's End". Bester's "The Demolished Man" is well worth a read, but I think also doesn't quite make the cut.
on “Ask HN: What's your favourite sci-fi/fantasy book?” ↗For anyone into cyberpunk, I recommend checking out Alfred Bested, who seriously influenced the genre. His two masterpieces, The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man, could both be called "proto-cyberpunk", but the one that I think comes closest is Extro (1975, also published as The Computer Connection). It's a crazy, fun, ballsy, flawed novel that was panned when…
on “Cyberpunk books that revolutionized the genre” ↗Thanks! I hadn't seen that Arthur C. Clarke story before. It reminds me of Alfred Bester's 1953 novel The Demolished Man: a murderer pays someone to write a catchy jingle (earworm) for him that can block psychics from reading his murderous thoughts.
on “Analyzing the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns” ↗