The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester, 1953)The first book that has received the Hugo Award (literary award for Science Fiction books), “The Demolished Man” by Alfred Bester is set in a future where there are Espers, who are telepaths. It is a badly written book that the only way I can imagine that it won the Hugo Award might be that in 1953 there really weren’t any good science-fiction books.
I give it points for certain originalities. Apparently, it is an early form of cyberpunk with big corporations, advanced technology, and full of thieves, hookers, and scum. Aside from that, I can’t imagine what else is good about it. Pulp novel dialogues and characters, that set a bad image for science-fiction, a genre I adore, but I also know is full of garbage. If this was the best of the genre in 1953, I wonder what non-science fiction fans thought of the genre if they read the “best” of it that year.
2/5
