In general, I find Bester’s prose difficult to get into. The ideas are great, but the execution is a distaster. But as with Bester’s other work, those moments of beinga ble to follow what was going on were not as extended as I would have liked them to be. When I could follow the plot, it was indeed exciting and tense. Bester has clearly thought long and hard about the way these abilities would change law enforcement, and how they might conceivably alter society as a whole. A considerable amount of thought has gone into the espers ( Extra Sensory Perception-ers) who make up the police force. To give Bester credit, the ideas in this book are great. Though The Demolished Man came out well beforehand, there are shades of Minority Report in that summary, and I was intrigued. And then there’s the premise of the book, which promises a fraught battle of wits between a would-be murderer and the telepathic police force determined to stop him. That sort of reputation is enough to make me sit up and take notice. As this SF Masterwork edition proudly boasts, it was the first novel to win a Hugo Award, which even now is one of the most coveted literary awards in the science fiction community. The Demolished Man holds a special place in the science fiction canon. But death always finds a way, and one man’s journey into violence could spell disaster for all involved. With telepathic law enforcement, violent crime should be impossible. Reprinted under the Gollancz SF Masterworks banner.
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