Disappearing Act - 3.5

Oddy and Id - 2.5

Star Light, Star Bright - 3.5

5,271,009 - 3.5

Fondly Fahrenheit - 3.5

Hobsons Choice - 4

Time and Third Avenue - 3.5

Time Is The Traitor - 4.5

The Men Who Killed Muhammad - 4

Pi Man - 3.5

They Don't Make Life Like They Used To - 4

Will you wait? - 3

The flowered thunder mug - 2.5

Adam and No Eve - 2.5

Galatea Galante - 2

The Devil Without Glasses - 4.5 ( )

Not a definitive collection, but much overlap w/ Starburst, which I just read. ?�Kind of overwhelming to read that much Bester in such a short span of time. ?áHe really is much more modern than most of his contemporaries of the 50s. ?áStill sexist, though... erotic to the young men for whom most SF was originally written. ( )

My reaction to reading this collection in 1998. Spoilers follow.

“Introduction”, Robert Silverberg -- Brief account of Bester’s sf career through 1956. The most interesting part is a quote from Damon Knight on Bester. Knight saw Bester as being a master of distraction, “dazzlement and enchantment”. He notes “Bester’s science is all wrong” and the characters are odd caricatures. It’s somewhat true. Certainly the science part as Bester cheerfully admitted. I would say the characters are no less realistic than many other authors. They are just usually extravagant and grandiose. Silverberg notes that Bester, at the top of his form, was superb but that “when he missed his mark, he usually missed it by five or six parsecs.” That was certainly true of his later novels The Computer Connection and The Deceivers.

“Disappearing Act”, Alfred Bester -- Essentially this 1953 story is a satire of the Cold War (written, of course, in Bester’s wonderfully rhythmic style). General Carpenter (a public relations general) creates a sort of fascistic or feudal state of “hardened and sharpened experts” to preserve the “American Dream” of “Culture, for Poetry, for the Only Things Worth Preserving”, never mind the destruction of most of America’s cities or the use of “ten thousand U-Bombs” or a one hundred million man army. When a group of combat shocked soldiers began teleporting out of a hospital, Carpenter thinks he sees a new weapon. (As a further detail of the satire, Carpenter turns universities and colleges into production grounds for his experts, an exaggeration of defense grants to American universities since the Cold War began. Genealogists work for the “Un-American Ancestors Committee”.) When a recruited dissident – an historian jailed for protesting the war (he wryly notes that the war to preserve “Poetry and Culture and Education and the Finer Things in Life.” is a war to preserve him) – discovers that the disappearing soldiers don’t teleport to another place or time but into a reality of their imagination, he suggests finding a poet to crack the secret of how this is done. Alas, the war to preserve Poetry has left no poets.

“Oddy and Id”, Alfred Bester -- Before Forbidden Planet’s “monsters from the Id” and Jerome Bixby “It’s a Good Life”, Bester did this version of unconscious disaster (though it was quite conscious in the Bixby story) wrecked by unconscious, selfish desires. Bester’s fiction often has the theme of common psychological traits (the id or the delusion we are all very unique) writ large.

“Star Light, Star Bright”, Alfred Beste r -- It was only after reading this story a second time that I realized just how many Bester’s stories feature the dark consequences of their characters realizing some basic conscious or unconscious wish. Here that idea is in pure form with child Stuart Buchanan having a talent for realizing, with no conscious effort, his wishes. Bester’s The Stars My Destination has a hopeful version of this plot with Gully Foyle turning over a weapon activated by more thought to the masses.

“5,271,009”, Alfred Bester -- I don’t remember liking this story the first time I read it a few years ago. On a second reading, in connection with rereading a lot of Bester’s short fiction in this collection, it seems a virtual compendium of the ways he explored what I’ve come to view as his major theme: the prodding and admonition to mature and drop childish fantasies and longings or, put starkly, grow up. Here, in a story that uses the combination of science and magic in the manner of his later Golem100 (and Bester does a wonderful job of using science and math in an incantatory way), addresses that notion in several ways with the psychological rehabilitation of an artist who is transported to a variety of fantasy worlds (this reminded me of Philip K. Dick’s Maze of Death and Eye in the Sky) based on various delusions (this also, probably not by accident, becomes a humorous compendium of 30s pulp themes). In one, he must repopulate the world and must have sex with virtually every fertile woman he sees. But they all hate the necessity of this (each “delusion” is undermined in its mini-story by practical considerations which show the delusion for what it is), the men resent it, and the artist (Jeff Halsyon) can’t marry and remain faithful to just one. In the next delusion, fantasies of unjust persecution and revenge and the unique ability to be a galactic savior. Solon Aquila has a few (he’s the therapeutic witch doctor) lines which contribute to making this the archetypal Bester story: “You are all alike. You dream you are the one man with a secret, the one man with a wrong, the one man with an injustice, with a girl, without a girl, with or without anything. God damn. You bore me, you one-man dreamers.” (Thus Bester again combines an attack on psychological fantasies and the delusion we are psychologically unique.) The next delusion is a very common sf plot of the person going back in time to exploit his future knowledge. But Halyson finds himself trapped by the circumstances of being a child and not remembering nearly as much science as he thought he did. The next delusion is the solipsistic fantasy of the world as someone’s created drama or one Halyson can rewrite. The next “baby dream” as Aquila refers to them, is the old last man on Earth plot with Halyson blowing his brains out when the last woman on Earth, beautiful and with an IQ of 141”, can’t do anything for his bad teeth. The title numbered, repeated many times throughout the story, turns out to be the approximate number of decisions we must make in a life, and there all important.

“Fondly Fahrenheit”, Alfred Bester -- My favorite Bester story, the one I’ve read the most. Even here, though, is what I’ve discovered to be Bester’s defining call for psychological maturity. It’s right there in the first paragraph’s admonition to “live your own life”. Apart from that, I’m still in awe of the technical brilliance of this story.

“Hobson’s Choice”, Alfred Bester -- While not the classic treatment of the plot and paradoxical opportunities in the time travel sub-genre (off-hand I can think of Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line, Alexander Jablokov’s “Ring of Time”, Stanislaw Lem’s Tales of Pirx the Pilot and Robert A. Heinlein “All You Zombies” in that regard), I think this is the classic story on the idea of time travel and the psychological fantasies and delusions that give it such power not only for the sf reader but, I suspect, make it an occasional fantasy of virtually every human. Again Bester launches an attack on what he, in “5, 271, 009” terms a “baby dream”.

“Of Time and Third Avenue”, Alfred Bester -- Another psychological lesson from Bester. Here the protagonist is told, “There is no joy in success as an unearned gift. There is nothing but guilt and unhappiness.”

“Time is the Traitor”, Alfred Bester -- The title phrase comes from Bester’s “5,271,009”. While this does not exactly fit with the main Bester theme of “baby dreams” and growing up, it is based on the psychological truth that the romantic lovers of our lives would not necessarily be lovers if they encountered us at other times in our lives. Bester, as I noticed this time he does frequently, ends his story with a moral: “The mind goes back, but time goes on, and farewells should be forever.”

“The Men Who Murdered Mohammed”, Alfred Bester -- I’ve read this classic time travel story (which takes a highly subjective view of time travel: that we each have our worldlines and altering them only destroys you) many times and still like it. I like Bester directly addressing the reader and stating that this story is not about the conventional type of mad professor – and then talking about historical mad professors.

“The Pi Man”, Alfred Beste -- Bester’s brilliant story (complete with trademark typographic experiments) still works. This story is not so much Bester’s typical lecture on abandoning childish fantasies as taking life’s temporary solaces whenever and wherever you find them.

“They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To”, Alfred Bester -- This is the second time I’ve read this story, and it still didn’t work for me. It’s a humorous variation on the last man on Earth story (Bester did several variations on this popular theme of sf). Here there is a last man and last woman and both are seemingly insane. The humor mostly comes from Bester setting up situations and dialogue that would usually resort in the characters bedding each other. That eventually happens at the end of this long story but not before a puzzling bit which implies that either Earth has been invaded by aliens or large mutant ants (or other insects). This story does have something of Bester’s theme of psychological maturation with the two finally having sex after literally tossing away their childish toys. However, the ending is ambiguous and seems to imply the final death of humanity (by whatever unknown entity replaced the heads of the statues in the Alice in Wonderland park) at this moment. Interesting for the humor (albeit one extended joke) but not one of Bester’s better efforts.

“Will You Wait?”, Alfred Bester -- Don’t think I’ve read this story, a humorous take on the old deal-with-the-devil idea, before.

“The Flowered Thundermug”, Alfred Bester -- I still liked this story the second time around. It’s premise of a future civilization based on the culture and weird “history” of Hollywood provides opportunities for humor and for Bester to show off his wit, erudition, and knowledge of art. I liked the destruction of this civilization at story’s end, and it’s replacement with a corrupted version of the 17th century. This cyclical view of history was a bit reminiscent of Jules Verne’s “The Eternal Adam”.

“Adam and No Eve”, Alfred Bester -- Despite the dated and improbable science of the runaway iron catalyst that induces fusion, this story’s depiction of a wasted earth and a man (the story’s a “shaggy god” story since it actually explains the beginning of our current biosphere and takes place a “hundred million centuries” ago and says that perhaps even the story’s biosphere began with “the rotting corpse” of some interstellar traveler) still works as does its image of life renewing itself from a “man’s” gangrenous body.

“And 3½ to Go”, Alfred Bester -- A fragment but a very polished fragment, that promises an interesting story about superhuman mutants with colorful and interesting abilities. Alas, Bester never finished it. Appropriately, the story ends with a Latin motto translated: “It’s much easier to begin a thing than to finish it.”

“Galatea Galante”, Alfred Bester -- I may have read this story when it first appeared in Omni (the copyright notice indicates a first appearance in Omni or Penthouse), but it didn’t make much of an impression on me. Bester’s erudition, knowledge of art, and typographical tricks are well displayed as his glittering dialogue and baroque touches (I liked the “Phantastik Phreaks” and the whole business of genetically engineering mythological and literary creatures. Bester also nails pretty well what men want from a mistress/lover (including the touch of acid), but the story never quite took off for me, and I was unmoved by the notion of Galatea as a succubus. Bester also shows his knack for bogus scientific details.

“The Devil Without Glasses”, Alfred Bester -- This story’s paranoia and things in the cosmos are not what they seem idea reminded me of L. Ron Hubbard’s Fear. It’s a somewhat atypical story in that this idea, which might have been denounced as a childish fantasy in some of his other stories, here is reality. Perhaps that’s why this story was never published (assuming he ever submitted it). It’s a competent story but bears few of the Bester-touches like typography experiments. Still, the dialogue is witty, and it’s not a bad story just not anything special. On the other hand, perhaps this is a vast expansion of Bester’s theme of attacking childish fantasies since the whole point of the story is to “awaken the Human Race”. ( )

Alfred Bester had an interesting way of looking at the world. In this collection of what is considered to be his best short fiction, we get a view of his world. He seemed to be obsessed with childhood fantasies, such as time travel and getting all of your wishes, but he viewed them as an adult and from the POV of what could go wrong and why these fantasies would not quite work. Not every story is like that, only some, others are straight hard Sci-fi, and very very dark. I highly recommend this book to any fan of the genre as a genuine treat. ( )

Good writing, poorly presented: The nice thing about this book is that it's pretty much the only way to get a good chunk of Bester's short fiction collected in one place. That said, the book itself suffers from serious problems. It seems that some time after the last copy editor looked it over, someone in the production process changed the book's type font. Since several of Bester's stories involve playful typesetting and/or characters that are outside the (current) normal set of symbols, a great deal of flavor was lost. One-quarter or one-half fractions replaced by square boxes, that type of thing. Too bad, because the publishers were obviously aiming for a product that you'd call nicer than the usual mass-market paperback. The screwy typeface errors mar that considerably.