The Demolished Man
In a world in which the police have telepathic powers, how do you get away with murder? Ben Reichs heads a huge 24th century business empire, spanning the solar system. He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
21mentions
18people
2008–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Ha, I know just the nerdy factoid to trot out to legitimize the frontpage placement. Brace:
These little cat-human conversation pieces embedded within remind me enormously of the telepathic conversations in Alfred Bester's mighty genre classic The Demolished Man and their special typesetting.
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- For anyone into cyberpunk, I recommend checking out Alfred Bested, who seriously influenced the genre.
His two masterpieces, The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man, could both be called "proto-cyberpunk", but the one that I think comes closest is Extro (1975, also published as The Computer Connection). It's a crazy, fun, ballsy, flawed novel that was panned when it came out, but way ahead of its time.
- Growing up I read a lot of “golden age” science fiction, and I remember realizing how many classic “hard” sci-fi novels and short stories feature super mental powers like telepathy, precognition, teleportation, etc.
- Asimov’s Foundation series
- Herbert’s Dune series
- Larry Niven’s Known Space stories
- Heinlein’s Stranger from a Strange Land
- Alfred Bester’s Demolished Man and Tiger Tiger
- Clarke’s Childhood’s End
I’m sure there are more that I forgot to mention.
It really did seem to be a pervasive expectation that the mind was the next frontier for seemingly magical scientific advancements. But it never panned out with actual results, and mental powers faded from hard sci-fi stories.
- Well depends on what you consider classics :-) Go to a second hand shop, bookstore where they sell used books and get whatever you like. Here is a small list that IMHO would appeal to many HN readers: - Isaac Asimov (foundation trilogy, robot series, short stories compilations) - William Gibson (nauromancer, bridge trilogy) - Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination) - Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon) - Orson Scott Card (Ender’s game, Speaker for the Dead) - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and punishment, the idiot, notes from the underground and many more) - Plato (apology, the republic) - Bible, Torah, Quran and any other sacred text - Mythology (Greek, Indian, Norse and o5hers) And a last one, completely unrelated... - Clive Barker (Hellraiser series, books of blood)
- This sounds like some inception from the far right to trick the far left into sounding insane.
I’m not sure if there’s a more far fetched wedge issue that drives the middle away than this. I though completely open borders was as interesting as I found, but “change human nature to never crime” is even better.
There’s a great science fiction book called “The Demolished Man” by Alfred Bester about a future society where criminals were rehabilitated rather than imprisoned.
- Also read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man where the main character comissions a songwriter to write an earworm song so that it would jam the telepaths reading his thoughts.
