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The Demolished Man - by Alfred Bester
This is held as a classic of the genre, and accomplished wreckless and fantastic invention for the course of all
260ish pages. Ben Reich is an alpha male - titan of industry, large and powerful in stature, and hard in his
business and personal life. In a world of people with emerging psychic powers, this feels like his only
failing, and he reacts with suspicion and caution to those who may be peeping around in his head.
The framework that Bester creates to handle a world where mind reading has become a fact of life is
quite detailed and rich, reaching in to the legal area needed to control these abilities, back through
the social branch of what a party of telepaths would resemble. The idea of framing conversations as
interleaving text, bounced between the interlinked minds, forming patterns and connections that far
surpass the single line of any text, is a triumph, and the actual formatting he applies to the text
was, and I'd claim remains, innovative.
I found the read flew by, with only a little lag in the middle (though that is more due to a lag in
my available time more than the narrative). Page after page revealed ideas and techniques that
would go on to be replicated in countless thousands of novels since 1952, and my enjoyment of
finding original material was well satisfied by this experience.
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