Tonight Aud reminded me of Alfred Bester's work. Outside the older hardcore SF readership he's largely forgotten and fuck that. I'm bumping his thread.

 is a reading w/scrolling text of the opening of his novel The Stars My Destination. It's known as Tiger, Tiger in the UK and probably mainland Europe. Some consider it the best science fiction novel ever written. While I'm not among them--the typographic flourishes feel dated and forced--its greatness is undeniable. The eight minute reading sets the stage for an ever expanding and arabesqued story of revenge.

A few years earlier he wrote The Demolished Man, a police procedural in a world of total thought control. Bester's aims are different but it points to where P.K. Dick would later be splashing before his own biggest & final crack-up. A few years after Tiger Bester wrote "Fondly Fahrenheit" which is on the one hand list of fiction which has scared the poo from my corporeal from. Not literally, but it was a close thing. My teen-aged sphincter leveled three times the night I read it. There's a handful of other stories worth reading but he faded quickly into a wealthy alcoholic ad exec.

In the 50s and early 60s Analog, the giant in the field, had wandered into Dianetics (soon to be Scientology) and perpetual motion machine jerk off delusion. Galaxy Magazine where those appeared was birthing science fiction as literature. The power and wonder inherent in the genre docked with the ability to write.

So there's your bump Mr. Bester. [Image Can Not Be Found]