The Stars My Destination

”You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you......I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars.”

This book was nothing like I expected. It started great. Main character lost in space, waiting for someone to find him. But it never happens. Which makes Gully angry. Really angry. I mean “fate of the world is in his hands” angry. It doesn't begin that ridiculous but it gets there. Gully is not likeable at all. He's a monster. Thanks to a twist of faith not only on the inside but also the outside. But... it eventually works.

The book is split into two parts. I'd give part one 2/5... part two 5/5. I might adjust the rating to more fair 4/5* down the line when I look back at this book but for now thanks to a stellar ending it's full rating. 5/5 usually also means that I'd like to re-read the book sometime in the future and this one certainly qualifies.

What brings the first part down is the character of Jisbella. She's insufferable. There are other women in part 2 which are written much better but anytime Jisbella was in the scene it brought my enjoyment down by a lot.

The book actually starts strong with very pleasant and thoughtful prose style which fizzles out a few pages later, when prologue (exposition) ends and we meet Gully who uses a primitive English dialect, though not for long. I loved his character development. He goes from a dummy to smart villain to repenting antihero. Prose then picks up at the end where we get “the message” of the book on a golden platter, part of it literally told by the author in a form of a glitching robot.

What's more, in the background of all of this is a metaphor for cold war, arms race and whether the mankind should be trusted with weapons of mass destruction.

The worldbuilding is excellent for a sci-fi from the 50's and it's clear why this book is so highly appraised by so many people in the business. However, until the very end I was puzzled why this is called The Stars My Destination. While very catchy and poetic, there is no stars until the very end. “Tiger! Tiger!” seems like more appropriate title for the book – it was the original one for like a year before the book was reprinted as TSMD. But try to sell a sci-fi with title like that...

Science Fiction is a genre that can date very badly. Some fiction from the ‘golden age' of the 1950's can be almost laughable now, so wide of the mark were its authors. For instance one of Asimov's robot stories posits that a robot can only be checked for faults by sending it to a vast, purpose-built factory. Miniaturisation never entered his head and a hand-held, portable scanner was an idea that never occurred to him, it seems. Bester's The Stars My Destination (originally published as Tiger Tiger) is a novel that instead seems timeless. In fact it reads almost like a cyber-punk novel. It could have been published at any time during the last half century.

The tale of Gully Foyle, lowly crew member on the spacecraft Nomad, an uneducated brute of a man, who we first meet trapped in a locker aboard the wreck of his ship. He's survived by animal instinct but when a chance of rescue passes him by, he sets out for revenge at all costs.

Bester's imaginary future describes a stand off between the Inner Planets (Earth, Venus, Mars) and the Outer Satellites (such as Titan), that spills over into all out war; a method of travel called ‘Jaunting' where human beings simply think themselves over vast distances; a society dominated by Corporate ‘Houses'. Into this rages Gully Foyle and over the course of the novel he becomes the fulcrum around which revolution starts. He educates himself, raises himself from the gutter, survives unimaginable hardships, gains vast wealth and is hunted by everyone for the secret of a weapon that will change the course of the war. But his sole purpose is revenge. Who gave the order not to rescue him?

This is both a rip-roaring adventure, a treatise on society and, at a deeper level, a meditation on what it means to be human and how we should treat each other. Foyle is one of fiction's most vivid creations. He's an anti-hero, a monster, yet in the end he hold the fate of the human race in his hands.

One of the classics of Science Fiction. Truly timeless.