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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-author"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Bester, Alfred </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 2 December 2024. Tagged: Author.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=bester_alfred'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=bester_alfred'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=bester_alfred'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Checklist" onclick="window.location.hash='chklst'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Alpha" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=bester_alfred&abc'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Chron" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=bester_alfred'" ></span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=bester_alfred');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=Bester-StarsMyDest1996.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/Bester-StarsMyDest1996.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>(1913-1987) US editor and author, born in New York, his first two sf novels – on which his reputation increasingly depends – both being largely set in a vividly presented future <a href="/entry/new_york">New York</a>. Educated in both humanities and sciences – including <a href="/entry/psychology">Psychology</a>, perhaps the most important "science" in his sf – Bester entered sf when he submitted a story to <a href="/entry/tws">Thrilling Wonder Stories</a>. Mort <a href="/entry/weisinger_mort">Weisinger</a>, the editor, helped Bester to polish it, and then suggested he submit it for an amateur story competition that <i>Thrilling Wonder Stories</i> was running. Bester did so and won. The story was "The Broken Axiom" (April 1939 <a href="/entry/tws">Thrilling Wonder</a>).</p> <p>Bester published another thirteen sf stories to 1942, and then followed his friend Weisinger, along with Otto <a href="/entry/binder_eando">Binder</a>, Manly Wade <a href="/entry/wellman_manly_wade">Wellman</a> and others, into the field of <a href="/entry/comics">Comic</a> books, working on such <a href="/entry/dc_comics">DC Comics</a> titles as <a href="/entry/superman_character">Superman</a>, <i>The Green Lantern</i> and <a href="/entry/batman">Batman</a>. He worked successfully for four years on comics outlines and dialogue, later working on <a href="/entry/captain_marvel">Captain Marvel</a>, and then moved into radio, scripting for such serials as <i>Charlie Chan</i> and <i>The Shadow</i> (see The <a href="/entry/shadow_the">Shadow</a>). After the intensive course in action plotting this career had given him, Bester returned (part-time) to the sf magazines in 1950, by now more mature as a writer, though his main job at the time was scripting the new television series <a href="/entry/tom_corbett_space_cadet">Tom Corbett: Space Cadet</a>. There ensued over the next six years a series of stories and novels which are increasingly deemed to be among the greatest creations of <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a>: perhaps, along with the only slightly later novels of Philip K <a href="/entry/dick_philip_k">Dick</a>, its culmination.</p> <p>Bester was never prolific in sf, which was more of a hobby than a career for him, publishing only 13 more short stories – mostly in <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/fsf">Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</a> – before 1960. (One of the five "Quintets" in <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/fsf">Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</a> September 1959 was by Bester writing as Sonny Powell.) But these alone would have secured him a place in the sf pantheon. Most of his stories were originally issued in book form in two collections, <i>Starburst</i> (coll <b>1958</b>) and <i>The Dark Side of the Earth</i> (coll <b>1964</b>). These collections were reassembled with six stories dropped, and one older novella – "Hell is Forever" – and three then quite recent stories added along with the amusing autobiographical essay "My Affair with Science Fiction" (in <i>Nova 4</i>, anth <b>1974</b>, ed Harry <a href="/entry/harrison_harry">Harrison</a>), in two further collections, <i>The Light Fantastic: The Great Short Stories of Alfred Bester, Volume I</i> (coll <b>1976</b>) and <i>Star Light, Star Bright: The Great Short Stories of Alfred Bester, Volume II</i> (coll <b>1976</b>), which were in turn reissued as an omnibus volume, <i>Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester</i> (omni <b>1976</b>). A final assembly, <i>Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester</i> (coll <b>1997</b>), which includes one previously unpublished tale, is probably definitive.</p> <p>Bester's talents were evident from the beginning. At least three stories from his 1939-1942 period are memorable: "Adam and No Eve" (September 1941 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) (see <a href="/entry/adam_and_eve">Adam and Eve</a>; <a href="/entry/end_of_the_world">End of the World</a>; <a href="/entry/last_man">Last Man</a>), "The Push of a Finger" (May 1942 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) and "Hell is Forever" (August 1942 <a href="/entry/unknown">Unknown</a>). The latter, a long novella, exhibits in a slightly sophomoric way the qualities for which Bester would later be celebrated: it is cynical, baroque and aggressive, produces hard, bright images in quick succession, and deals with obsessive states of mind. The most notable later story is "Fondly Fahrenheit" (August 1954 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>), a breathless story of a man and his <a href="/entry/androids">Android</a> servant whose personalities intermesh in a homicidal <i>folie à deux</i>. Also memorable are "Of Time and Third Avenue" (October 1951 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>), "Disappearing Act" (in <i>Star Science Fiction Stories 2</i>, anth <b>1953</b>, ed Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>) and "The Men who Murdered Mohammed" (October 1958 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>), one of the most concentratedly witty twists on the <a href="/entry/time_paradoxes">Time-Paradox</a> story ever written. At about the time of this story Bester addressed an sf symposium at the University of Chicago; his paper is one of the four reprinted in the anonymously edited <i>The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism</i> (anth <b>1959</b>; intro by Basil <a href="/entry/davenport_basil">Davenport</a>).</p> <p>Bester's first two sf novels, <i>The Demolished Man</i> (January-March 1952 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>; <b>1953</b>) and <i>Tiger! Tiger!</i> (October 1956-January 1957 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a> as "The Stars My Destination"; <b>1956</b>; rev vt <i>The Stars My Destination</i> <b>1957</b>; rev <b>1996</b>), are (as noted above) among the genuine classics of <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a>. Structurally they are the sf equivalent of the Jacobean revenge drama: both feature malcontent figures, outsiders from society bitterly cognizant of its corruption, but themselves partly ruined by it, just as in <i>The Revenger's Tragedy</i> or <i>The Duchess of Malfi</i>; like them, too, Bester's novels blaze with a sardonic imagery, mingling symbols of decay and new life – rebirth is a recurrent theme – with a creative profligacy; they were cited by Brian W <a href="/entry/aldiss_brian_w">Aldiss</a> as major examples of the subgenre he termed <a href="/entry/widescreen_baroque">Widescreen Baroque</a>.</p> <p><i>The Demolished Man</i>, which won the first <a href="/entry/hugo">Hugo</a> for Best Novel, in 1953, tells a story which in synopsis is straightforward: industrialist Ben Reich commits murder (in a society where murder is almost unknown because <a href="/entry/telepathy">Telepathy</a>-using <a href="/entry/esper">Espers</a> can either detect the idea before the act is carried out or subsequently read the perpetrator's guilt), almost gets away with it, is ultimately caught by Esper detective Linc Powell, and is committed to curative brainwashing, "demolition" (see <a href="/entry/identity">Identity</a>; <a href="/entry/crime_and_punishment">Crime and Punishment</a>). It is the pace, the staccato style, the passion and the pyrotechnics that make the novel extraordinary. The future society is evoked in marvellously hard-edged details; the hero is a driven, resourceful man whose obsessions are explained in Freudian terms that might seem too glib if they were given straight, but are evoked with the same New Yorker's painful, ironic scepticism that informs the whole novel. Bester's mainstream novel <i>Who He?</i> (<b>1953</b>; vt <i>The Rat Race</i> <b>1956</b>), about the television and advertising businesses, sheds some light on the milieu of <i>The Demolished Man</i>. Incidentally, although this coinage eluded the attention of dictionary researchers until 2020, <i>The Demolished Man</i> contains what seems to be the first appearance of the then-neologistic "audiobook".</p> <p>As Bester's original manuscript and/or editorial notes are missing, the sometimes significant textual variations among the four iterations of <i>Tiger! Tiger!</i> or <i>The Stars My Destination</i> [as given in the Checklist below] have proved singularly difficult to sort out. In his reprinting of this central tale in <i>American Science Fiction</i> (anth/omni <b>2012</b> 2vols) Gary K <a href="/entry/wolfe_gary_k">Wolfe</a>, after much consideration, selected the 1957 Signet first American edition as copy text. In whatever form, the novel tells the story of the now legendary Gully Foyle, whose passion for revenge transforms him from an illiterate outcast to a transcendent, ambiguous, quasi-<a href="/entry/superman">Superman</a> in "an age of freaks, monsters and grotesques" (as outlined in a scene-setting Prologue, a loose parody of the beginning passages of Charles <a href="/entry/dickens_charles">Dickens</a>'s <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> [<b>1859</b>] which is one of sf's most memorable <a href="/entry/infodump">Infodumps</a>) where the <a href="/entry/psi_powers">Psi Power</a> of <a href="/entry/teleportation">Teleportation</a> is near-universal. Like the first novel, this one lives as much through the incidentals of the setting – in a lurid, crumbling, twenty-fifth-century world, where the rich live in armoured <a href="/entry/keep">Keeps</a> – as in the plot itself, portions of which, Bester acknowledged, were borrowed from Alexandre <a href="/entry/dumas_alexandre">Dumas</a>'s <i>Le Comte de Monte-Christo</i> (28 August 1844-15 January 1846 <i>Journal des Débats</i>; <b>1844-1845</b> 18vols; rev <b>1846</b> 2vols; rev ed trans as <i>The Count of Monte-Cristo</i> <b>1846</b> 2vols). Foyle's unjust immurement in an <a href="/entry/underground">Underground</a> <a href="/entry/prisons">Prison</a> and his escape are clearly derived from this source; and his subsequent transformation into the ominous joker Geoffrey Fourmyle also echoes the original, even to details like supernatural agility and the power to see in the dark – here resulting from <a href="/entry/cyborgs">Cyborg</a> rewiring. But the conclusion, where a tortured and transfigured Foyle (wracked with <a href="/entry/synaesthesia">Synaesthesia</a>) seems about to become a <a href="/entry/messiahs">Messiah</a>, extends beyond Dumas; along with the pyrotechnics in space, this flamboyantly <a href="/entry/transcendence">Transcendental</a> ending strengthens the sense that the novel was a central father of the "new" <a href="/entry/space_opera">Space Opera</a> a few decades later. The first volume of a <a href="/entry/graphic_novel">Graphic-Novel</a> version by Howard V <a href="/entry/chaykin_howard_v">Chaykin</a> (adaptation by Byron <a href="/entry/preiss_byron">Preiss</a>), was <i>The Stars My Destination: The Graphic Story Adaptation: Volume One</i> (graph <b>1979</b>); the second volume, though widely bruited, was not in fact published until it appeared, with the first, in <i>The Stars My Destination: The Graphic Story Adaptation</i> (graph <b>1992</b>).</p> <p>In the late 1950s Bester was taken on by <i>Holiday</i> magazine as a feature writer, ultimately becoming senior literary editor, a post he held until the magazine ceased publication in 1977, at which time he returned to sf. "The Four-Hour Fugue" (June 1974 <a href="/entry/analog">Analog</a>) shows the old extraordinary assurance and inventiveness, and just a trace of over-facility. Two decades after his previous, his new novel, <i>The Computer Connection</i> (November 1974-January 1975 <a href="/entry/analog">Analog</a> as "The Indian Giver"; <b>1975</b>; vt <i>Extro</i> <b>1975</b>), while full of incidental felicities, did not quite recapture the old drive in its ornate story of a group of immortals and an omniscient <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a>; perhaps it lacked a natural "Besterman" as focus. The pace and complexity were still there, but somehow looking like self-<a href="/entry/parody">Parody</a>.</p> <p>The next book, <i>Golem<sup>100</sup></i> (<b>1980</b>), was more ambitious, had a more authentic Bester flavour, and was perhaps surprisingly regarded by Bester as his best novel. It expands "The Four-Hour Fugue" into an extraordinary but overheated tale of the jungle of <a href="/entry/new_york">New York</a> in 2175 CE, with diabolism, depth psychology (a Monster from the Id), bee superwomen, pheromones, perverse sex, and overall a miasma of death. But the 1960s-style radicalism now looked a little out of date, and what used to be spare and sinewy in his work had begun to seem prolix; the craziness looked like ornamentation rather than what it once was, structural. His last sf novel was <i>The Deceivers</i> (<b>1981</b>), which features a Synergist hero who can perceive patterns; sadly, but interestingly in the light of Bester's fame, the sf press almost unanimously failed to review this, presumably out of respect for his feelings. Despite many pale thematic echoes of his best work – chiefly <i>Tiger! Tiger!</i>, with the hero's pattern-sensitivity deriving from "The Pi Man" (October 1959 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>) – it is not good. When he died six years later, after a long period of ill health, he willed his house and literary estate to his bartender. The posthumously published <i>Tender Loving Rage</i> (<b>1991</b>), written more than 20 years earlier, is a mainstream novel set in 1959, and appropriately features a scientist adopted by the New York advertising/tv people.</p> <p>Bester's innovative, ferocious, magpie (his word) talent has certainly been influential in <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a>, on writers as disparate as James <a href="/entry/blish_james">Blish</a>, Samuel R <a href="/entry/delany_samuel_r">Delany</a> and Michael <a href="/entry/moorcock_michael">Moorcock</a>. In many respects his work was a forerunner of <a href="/entry/cyberpunk">Cyberpunk</a>. He is one of the very few genre-sf writers to have bridged the chasm between the old and the <a href="/entry/new_wave">New Wave</a>, and to become a legendary figure for both – perhaps because in his sf imagery he conjured up, with bravura, both outer and <a href="/entry/inner_space">Inner Space</a>. In 1988 he posthumously received the <a href="/entry/sfwa_grand_master_award">SFWA Grand Master Award</a>; he was inducted into the <a href="/entry/sf_hall_of_fame">Science Fiction Hall of Fame</a> in 2001 and into the <a href="/entry/first_fandom_hall_of_fame">First Fandom Hall of Fame</a> in 2024. [PN]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/conceptual_breakthrough">Conceptual Breakthrough</a>; <a href="/entry/elements">Elements</a>; <a href="/entry/esp">ESP</a>; <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy Science Fiction</a>; <a href="/entry/golden_age_of_sf">Golden Age of SF</a>; <a href="/entry/gothic_sf">Gothic SF</a>; <a href="/entry/history_of_sf">History of SF</a>; <a href="/entry/humour">Humour</a>; <a href="/entry/imaginary_science">Imaginary Science</a>; <a href="/entry/linguistics">Linguistics</a>; <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/fsf">Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</a>; <a href="/entry/nebula">Nebula</a>; <a href="/entry/optimism_and_pessimism">Optimism and Pessimism</a>; <a href="/entry/outer_planets">Outer Planets</a>; <a href="/entry/perception">Perception</a>; <a href="/entry/sf_in_the_classroom">SF in the Classroom</a>; <a href="/entry/supernatural_creatures">Supernatural Creatures</a>; <a href="/entry/torture">Torture</a>; <a href="/entry/transportation">Transportation</a>; <a href="/entry/villains">Villains</a>.</p> <h3 id="chklst">Alfred Bester</h3> <p><b>born</b> New York: 18 December 1913</p> <p><b>died</b> Doylestown, Pennsylvania: 30 September 1987</p> <p><b>works</b></p> <p><input type="button" value="Alphabetical" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=bester_alfred&abc'"> <input type="button" value="Chronological" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=bester_alfred'"></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Demolished+Man&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Demolished Man</a></em> (Chicago, Illinois: Shasta Publishers, <b>1953</b>) [first appeared January-March 1952 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>: hb/Martin Herbstman]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Who+He&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Who He?</a></em> (New York: The Dial Press, <b>1953</b>) [hb/H Lawrence Hoffman] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Rat+Race&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Rat Race</a></em> (New York: Berkley Books, <b>1956</b>) [vt of the above: pb/Dave Attie]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Tiger+Tiger&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Tiger! Tiger!</a></em> (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, <b>1956</b>) [first appeared October 1956-January 1957 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a> as "The Stars My Destination": hb/] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Stars+My+Destination&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Stars My Destination</a></em> (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, <b>1957</b>) [rev vt of the above: contains Jack <a href="/entry/gaughan_jack">Gaughan</a>'s typographical artwork from <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>: pb/Richard <a href="/entry/powers_richard_m">Powers</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Stars+My+Destination+The+Graphic+Story&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Stars My Destination: The Graphic Story Adaptation: Volume One</a></em> (New York: Baronet Publishing Company, <b>1979</b>) with Howard V <a href="/entry/chaykin_howard_v">Chaykin</a> and Byron <a href="/entry/preiss_byron">Preiss</a> [graph: illus/Howard V Chaykin: hb/nonpictorial and pb/Howard V <a href="/entry/chaykin_howard_v">Chaykin</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Stars+My+Destination+The+Graphic+Story&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Stars My Destination: The Graphic Story Adaptation</a></em> (New York: Epic Comics, <b>1992</b>) with Howard V <a href="/entry/chaykin_howard_v">Chaykin</a> and Byron <a href="/entry/preiss_byron">Preiss</a> [graph: exp of the above to complete story: illus/pb/Howard V <a href="/entry/chaykin_howard_v">Chaykin</a>]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Stars+My+Destination&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Stars My Destination</a></em> (New York: Vintage Books, <b>1996</b>) [rev: re-edited by Alex <a href="/entry/eisenstein_alex">Eisenstein</a> and Phyllis <a href="/entry/eisenstein_phyllis">Eisenstein</a> with material from both past versions: introduction by Neil <a href="/entry/gaiman_neil">Gaiman</a>: partly illus/Jack <a href="/entry/gaughan_jack">Gaughan</a> (original <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a> artwork): pb/Evan Gaffney]</li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Computer+Connection&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Computer Connection</a></em> (New York: Berkley Publishing, <b>1975</b>) [first appeared November 1974-January 1975 <a href="/entry/analog">Analog</a> as "The Indian Giver": hb/Richard <a href="/entry/powers_richard_m">Powers</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Extro&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Extro</a></em> (London: Eyre Methuen, <b>1975</b>) [vt of the above: hb/Peter Tybus]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Golem100&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Golem<sup>100</sup></a></em> (New York: Simon and Schuster, <b>1980</b>) [hb/Rowena <a href="/entry/morrill_rowena">Morrill</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Deceivers&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Deceivers</a></em> (New York: Simon and Schuster, <b>1981</b>) [pb/Michael <a href="/entry/whelan_michael">Whelan</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Tender+Loving+Rage&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Tender Loving Rage</a></em> (Houston, Texas: Tafford Publishing, <b>1991</b>) [hb/Kent Bash]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Psychoshop&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Psychoshop</a></em> (New York: Vintage Books, <b>1998</b>) with Roger <a href="/entry/zelazny_roger">Zelazny</a> [pb/Evan Gaffney]</li> </ul> <p><b>collections and stories</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Starburst&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Starburst</a></em> (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, <b>1958</b>) [coll: pb/Richard <a href="/entry/powers_richard_m">Powers</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Dark+Side+of+the+Earth&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Dark Side of the Earth</a></em> (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, <b>1964</b>) [coll: pb/uncredited] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=An+Alfred+Bester+Omnibus&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">An Alfred Bester Omnibus</a></em> (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, <b>1967</b>) [omnibus of the above plus <em>The Demolished Man</em> and <em>Tiger! Tiger!</em>: hb/nonpictorial]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Light+Fantastic+The+Great+Short+Stories+of&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Light Fantastic: The Great Short Stories of Alfred Bester, Volume I</a></em> (New York: Berkley Publishing, <b>1976</b>) [coll: hb/Richard <a href="/entry/powers_richard_m">Powers</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Star+Light+Star+Bright+The+Great+Short+Stories&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Star Light, Star Bright: The Great Short Stories of Alfred Bester, Volume II</a></em> (New York: Berkley Publishing, <b>1976</b>) [coll: hb/Richard <a href="/entry/powers_richard_m">Powers</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Starlight+The+Great+Short+Fiction+of+Alfred&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester</a></em> (Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, <b>1976</b>) [omni of the above two: hb/Jack Woolhiser]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Virtual+Unrealities+The+Short+Fiction+of+Alfred&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester</a></em> (New York: Vintage Books, <b>1997</b>) [coll: pb/Evan Gaffney]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Redemolished&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Redemolished</a></em> (New York: Ibooks, <b>2000</b>) [coll: comprises short fiction omitted from <em>Virtual Unrealities</em>, and nonfiction including a previously unpublished prologue to <em>The Demolished Man</em>: pb/Simon Danaher]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Flowered+Thundermug+A+Science+Fiction+Comedy&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Flowered Thundermug: A Science Fiction Comedy</a></em> (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, <b>2009</b>) [story: chap: first appeared in <em>The Dark Side of the Earth</em> (coll <b>1964</b>): pb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Starcomber&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Starcomber</a></em> (Floyd, Virginia: Positronic Publishing, <b>2013</b>) [story: chap: first appeared March 1954 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a> as "5,271,009": pb/Nejron]</li> </ul> <p><b>about the author</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>Alfred Bester. "My Affair with Science Fiction" in <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Hell+Cartographers+Some+Personal+Histories+of&field-author=Alfred+Bester" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Hell's Cartographers: Some Personal Histories of Science Fiction Writers</a></em> (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, <b>1975</b>) edited by Brian W <a href="/entry/aldiss_brian_w">Aldiss</a> and Harry <a href="/entry/harrison_harry">Harrison</a> [anth: hb/Nicholas Sutton]</li> <li>Carolyn Wendell. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Alfred+Bester&field-author=Carolyn+Wendell" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Alfred Bester</a></em> (Mercer Island, Washington: Starmont House, <b>1982</b>) [chap: in the publisher's <b>Starmont Reader's Guide</b> series: pb/Stephen E <a href="/entry/fabian_stephen_e">Fabian</a> Jr and Stephen Fabian Sr]</li> <li>Jad Smith. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Alfred+Bester&field-author=Jad+Smith" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Alfred Bester</a></em> (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, <b>2016</b>) [in the publisher's <b>Modern Masters of Science Fiction</b> series: hb/Smriti Pillay]</li> <li>D Harlan <a href="/entry/wilson_d_harlan">Wilson</a>. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Alfred+Bester+The+Stars+My+Destination+A&field-author=Wilson+D+Harlan" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination: A Critical Companion</a></em> (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, <b>2022</b>) [nonfiction: hb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>nonfiction</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Experiment+Perilous+Three+Essays+on+Science&field-author=Bester+Alfred" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Experiment Perilous: Three Essays on Science Fiction</a></em> (New York: Algol Press, <b>1976</b>) with Marion Zimmer <a href="/entry/bradley_marion_zimmer">Bradley</a> and Norman <a href="/entry/spinrad_norman">Spinrad</a> edited anonymously by Andrew <a href="/entry/porter_andrew">Porter</a> [nonfiction: anth: pb/uncredited]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="http://templetongate.net/bester.htm">The Templeton Gate: Alfred Bester</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6">Internet Speculative Fiction Database</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/51483">Project Gutenberg</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=bester_alfred">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bester_alfred' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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