The Demolished Man

Upon the recommendation of a relative, I read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. A complex novel with detective fiction and science fiction elements, two of my favorite genres, Bester's tale of a wealthy industrialist murdering a corporate rival while a telepathic police prefect tries to prove the former's guilt is a wild ride in a future New York centuries from now. Bester, whose influence on subsequent generations of science fiction writers is always mentioned, does not delve into great detail describing this future world, but it appears to be an early cyberpunk aesthetic with a criminal underworld, monopolistic corporations which resemble of the zaibatsus of Gibson, a Spaceland resort, and interplanetary colonization. The Espers, or peepers, those with telepathic powers, are organized into a Guild, but divided into two camps: right-wing extremists who want to ensure Esper supremacy, and the Guild leadership which is trying to spread the gift of telepathy to the entire human race. Ben Reich, who finds the Guild an obstacle to business, and fears the D'Courtney Cartel, conspires with the help of two telepaths to successfully murder D'Courtney. Of course, things are more complex, and Reich is not completely aware or sure of his motives for the crime, while Lincoln Powell, the Esper policeman, who knows Reich is guilty, struggles to prove it. 

Perhaps what is most interesting here, however, is how skillfully it foreshadows some of the major concerns in the novels of Philip K. Dick in the 1960s and 1970s. Large, monopolistic firms, unbridled capitalism, the threat of fascism and social divisions, and the unreliable basis of reality. Unlike Bester, Dick didn't resort to telepathy so much, but his precogs who could predict the future, were always major characters who represented future advances in human evolution and could predict, somewhat, the unstable world of post-apocalyptic societies. However, unlike Dick, who almost certainly had Marxist sympathies, Bester's novel is a bit more difficult to comprehend, politically. The greater than human personality of Ben Reich, an Übermensch overwhelmed by death obsession and criminality, appears to be on the verge of changing history as some kind of mythic, great man, is depicted as a sympathetic figure with regards to what his force could do for the Solar System. Without ruining the conclusion, it would appear that the Guild ultimately survives, and there is a hint of optimism, perhaps representing a kind of non-capitalist, mutualist order prevailing against fascist or zaibatsu-like domination through great men. With rehabilitation and emotional support, the great man can be utilized for the good of society, instead of being left only with the "sheep." Unfortunately, there isn't enough detail on this world to grasp a better idea of its society, but it would seem to have certainly influenced Dick and Gibson's imagined future of capital.