The Demolished Man

 

The Demolished Man

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Alfred Bester
Cover artist	Mark Reinsberg
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Shasta Publishers (first edition)
Publication date	1953
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	250 pp
ISBN	NA

The Demolished Man , by Alfred Bester, is a science fiction novel that was the first Hugo Award winner in 1953. The story was first serialized in three parts, beginning with the January 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine; its first novel form publication was in 1953. The novel is dedicated to H. L. Gold, the editor of Galaxy, who published it and also made suggestions during its writing. Originally, Bester's title was Demolition!, but Gold talked him out of it.

Plot introduction

The Demolished Man is a police procedural novel with a story set in a future world where telepathy is common; a major plot component is a jingle that the protagonist obsessively has in his mind, to block his thoughts from casual telepathic scanning.

Plot summary

The story occurs in the 24th century, in a society where telepaths — "Espers" formally, "peepers" colloquially — help guard peace and order. Espers are classed according to their abilities: Class 3 Espers are the most common, and can detect only conscious thoughts in people; Class 2 Espers can dig deeply, to the pre-conscious level, detecting subliminal patterns, epiphanies, and tenuous associations; and Class 1 Espers can detect sub-conscious, primitive urges, which sometimes places them at risk. All Espers can telepathically talk amongst themselves, and the more powerful, senior Espers can overwhelm their juniors. Telepathic ability is innate and heritable, but can remain latent and undetected in untrained persons. Once recognized, however, natural aptitude can be developed through instruction and exercise. There is a guild to improve Espers’ telepathic skills, to set and enforce ethical conduct guidelines, and to increase the Esper population through intermarriage. Some telepaths object to the Esper Guild’s authoritarian control.

The story starts with the travails of Ben Reich, the impetuous young owner of Monarch Enterprises, a commercial cartel that the Reich family has possessed for generations. Monarch Enterprises is in danger of bankruptcy, because of the greater success of its chief rival, the D’Courtney Cartel, headed by the older Craye d’Courtney. Reich's business struggles against his rival exact a toll upon his mental health, leading to recurring nightmares in which a Man With No Face persecutes him. Frustrated and desperate, and after a failed attempt to engineer a merger or partnership with d’Courtney, Ben Reich decides he must kill Craye d’Courtney, however, the societal presence of peepers has prevented the commission of murder for more than seventy years, so Reich devises an elaborate plan to ensure his freedom. If he is caught, Reich will certainly face “Demolition”, a terrible punishment described only at story's end.

Reich hires an Esper to “run interference” for him — hiding his murderous thoughts from any peepers present at the scene of the planned crime. Reich has many Class 2 and Class 3 Espers working for him, but for this task he must hire a top Class 1 Esper. In a riveting passage in the book, Reich bribes Dr. Gus Tate, the prominent peeper psychiatrist, to be his mental bodyguard during the murder. Dr. Tate helps Reich by stealing information about D’Courtney’s whereabouts by peeping an unknowing colleague.

To further conceal his intentions, Reich visits a songwriter who teaches him a deceptively simple jingle: 'Tenser', said the Tensor; 'tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun' that proves to be an earworm, so persistent and involving, that it blocks most Espers from properly peeping into Reich's mind; (the lyrics are a favourite feature of the book to its fans). Finally, Reich secures a twentieth-century handgun, and influences a socialite into playing a game of Sardines at a coming party.

The murder plan is executed during the game at the party, but not without unexpected obstacles. D’Courtney’s daughter, Barbara, witnesses the murder and runs away. She is later found, suffering severe psychological shock rendering her speechless. When the crime scene is secured, Lincoln Powell, the hero of the story emerges.

Police Prefect Lincoln Powell is a Class 1 Esper. He is a highly talented man expected to become the next president of the Esper Guild. Powell immediately discovers Reich through some cleverly disguised peeping, however, Reich’s Esper attorney is present at that encounter, noting that telepathically-gathered evidence is legally inadmissible in court, obliging Powell to assemble the murder case with traditional police procedures: establishing motive, opportunity, and method.

The chase is afoot, and businessman Reich’s vast financial resources and careful planning prove a match for the top police peeper in the city. Finally, both sides center on Barbara d’Courtney, though her delicate mental state makes her an insufficiently reliable crime witness. Although Reich finds her first, he is unable to kill her; Powell rescues her, but loses Reich. Powell's pursuit traverses the Solar System, as Reich escapes the police and a series of mysterious assassination attempts, seemingly, by the Man With No Face. As he learns more, Powell recognises that the forces behind Reich’s crime are greater than anticipated. He asks the help of every Esper in attempting to arrest Reich, channeling their collective mental energy through Powell in the dangerous telepathic procedure Mass Cathexis Measure; Powell narrowly succeeds.

In the end, Ben Reich is revealed as illegitimate son of Craye d’Courtney, and that Reich's hatred of him was probably because of his latent, telepathic knowledge of that fact. Reich's knowledge isn’t explicitly stated, but Barbara, Reich’s half-sister, is herself revealed to be a peeper. Once arrested and convicted, Reich is sentenced to the dreaded Demolition — the stripping away of his memories and the upper layers of his personality, emptying his mind for re-education. This 24th century society uses psychologic demolition because it recognises the social value of strong personalities able to successfully defy the law, seeking the salvaging of positive traits in ridding the person of the evil consciousness of the criminal.

Characters in The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester sought to create equal rivals in his depictions of Ben Reich and Lincoln Powell. Although the figures are not properly balanced, they share qualities that set them apart from their peers. Reich is probably the most intriguing character. He lacks moral integrity, and is willing to take considerable risks in order to see his wishes carried out, however, he is a very charming man to many around him, especially at the story's beginning, when his desperation is still checked. His personal mantra is: Make your enemies by choice, not by accident. Throughout the story, the reader may sympathize with Reich as much as with Powell.

Lincoln Powell is said to have a dual personality; behind the correct role of model Esper and perfect cop hides Dishonest Abe, a parody of Abraham Lincoln. Usually, Dishonest Abe takes the lead in conversation; with Powell finding himself lying in earnest to anybody, for the sake of just amusing himself. This characterization may be unconvincing, but it serves to represent two things: First, as perhaps the best mind on the planet, Powell finds himself constantly alone, and must invent games to keep himself amused. Second, this character trait shows that both Reich and Powell are exceptional, and that people such as they always must violate society's rules in order to improve it.

Women characters are belittled, somewhat; most have open sexual interest in either of the two male protagonists, which undermines their value as individual figures. Yet, this portrayal of women is typical of pulp literature stereotypes, a style that Bester adopted throughout the book.

Minor characters are similarly stereotypical, but not without artistic, literary attraction. One is Keno Quizzard, the blind albino (a motif also in The Stars My Destination), leader of an underworld organization employing gimpsters (gangsters), hired by Reich to help find Barbara d'Courtney.

Chooka Frood is a corrupt brothel keeper. She keeps a bodyguard (a possible friend-companion-lover) named Magda who has red eyes, laughs continually, dresses in leather and studs (remarkable for 1951), and is apt to attack at the slightest provocation.

Songstress Duffy Wyg& (read Wygand), the composer of the 'Tenser,' said the Tensor jingle, is portrayed as the essential "modern career woman, the virgin seductress" who seems to crave either humiliation or conquest by men, although such a woman is a staple genre character in film noir cinema and hard-boiled detective fiction, her character and presence in 1951 science fiction, are, again, remarkable.

Major themes

Stylistic methods

Foremost among the interesting stylistic methods that Alfred Bester uses are the graphologic deviations representing communication among the Esper characters. The range of graphologic layouts utilised represents the human psyche's chaotic nature, and how Espers have learned to structure their thoughts for smooth telepathic communication. The Espers use different patterns in structuring their thoughts, (and also for their own entertainment). For example, when a telepath party begins, Espers' thoughts are represented chaotically, in unbound form:

Frankly                     Canapes?                       Why
   Ellery                     Thanks       delicious     yes,
      I                           Mary, they're        Tate,
       Don't                                         I'm
         Think                                   treating
           You'll          Canapes?              D'Courtney.
 We            Be                                       I
brought         Working                                Expect
  Galen           For                                     him
    along          Monarch                                   in
       to           Much   Canapes?                           town
help him celebrate     Longer.                                 shortly.
                He's      The 
          just taken his Guild
                         is   exam
                      just       and
                     about         been
                     to              classed

Once the party is properly structured, however, we see the group force themselves to play their thoughts into a cohesive pattern:

Sorry, Lincoln.    We weren't party-minded   Enough
Tate               thought                   Esper
but                Alan                      Men
I'm                Seaver                    remaining
Not that a Pres    was ever elected still    unmarried

This pattern is the 'simple basket weave', but others exist. Mathematical curves, Music, and Architectural design also are mentioned in the same passage. The Espers also use this technique in playing simple logic games and in creating pattern puzzles. An example of this is the Einstein rebus word picture of an eyeball floating in a stein; (an eye in a stein -> eye in stein -> Einstein).

Allusions and references to actual history, geography, and current science

The action occurs in New York City, years after a major war left some remarkable geographic features. One is the Bomb Inlet, but the most bizarre is the place called 99 Bastion West Side, a mega-brothel built where a nuclear explosion melted thousands of tons of glass and ceramics in an underground chamber. The result is a multi-colored, singing, solid lake which owner, Chooka Frood, uses as part of a mystic fortune-telling act. It is there that Barbara d'Courtney eventually is found, in a zombie-like mental state, participating in the fortune telling act. The building above is a three dimensional maze of odd-sized chambers variously used for pursuing vice and for evading pursuing police.

This combination of low-life characters in wrecked, run-down places is a reason The Demolished Man is regarded as prototypical of the literary style now known as cyberpunk.

On the other side of the coin, there is much high technology in evidence, though it is used to propel the plot in comic-book fashion, regardless of the long-term narrative consequences; thus the fast space-ships, artificial gravity, Neuron Scrambler guns, aerial cars known as Jumpers, force-shields, "temporal phase" technology used to hide a safe, and so forth and so on. The weapon used for the murder, however, is had from that most ancient establishment, the pawnshop, run by an ostracized telepath who made the mistake of breaking Guild rules for money offered by Ben Reich.

In a prescient joke, for the 1950s, it is revealed that annoyingly catchy jingles are nicknamed Pepsis, though no one can remember why.

References

• Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd., 593-594. 
• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent, 43. ISBN 0-911682-20-1. 

External link

• The Demolished Man publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Preceded by (none)

Hugo Award for Best Novel 1953

Succeeded by They'd Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley

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