Public reader discussion about The Push of a Finger in the WeRead Catalog by Alfred Bester.
By annotationcrescent
I’m usually more of a fantasy reader, but I’ve definitely read a fair bit of sci-fi too—mostly older stuff, like Philip Dick and Asimov. That said, Alfred Bester’s books totally blew me away. I’m just curious: is he a really big deal in the sci-fi world, like the Neil Gaiman comparison people make, or is he kind of more under the radar? If he’s not super widely read, honestly, I’d still really recommend grabbing one of his books and starting there.
By cloudyriver
I feel like I’ve been out of the loop, because I never see people bring up *The Star’s My Destination* (and I guess *Tiger, Tiger* is the version the Brits got first). I only actually read it the first time in high school, in this “Intro to Sci-fi” class—our English/creative writing teacher basically begged the school board to let him teach it. This was back in the mid-90s, way before Amazon, and since it wasn’t some mainstream title, he knew we’d have a nightmare finding enough copies (like, 20 of them). So his plan was that twice a week he’d hand out photocopied chapters for us to read. I’d usually blow through whatever he gave us before I even made it home. That book was so good it was ridiculous, and I still remember that annoying feeling of having to wait until the next chapter like it was torture. He even used parts of it in his creative writing class to show how to present stuff in a way most people wouldn’t. After that, I went hunting in every bookstore I could find for *The Demolished Man* because it was listed in the “also by Alfred Bester” part. Pretty great too. And *Tenser said the Tensor* was stuck in my head for weeks. Anyway, if you’ve never read *The Star’s My Destination*, you should probably fix that sooner rather than later. Then tell me how it goes with the “jaunting” thing—because I tried for way longer than I’d like to admit and never managed to pull it off.