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Motions came as sounds to him. He heard the writhing of the flames, he heard the swirls of smoke . . . the flickering, jeering shadows . . . all speaking deafeningly in strange tongues. Color was pain to him . . . Touch was taste to him . . . feel of wood was acrid and chalky in his mouth, metal was salt, stone tasted sour-sweet to the touch of his fingers, and the feel of glass cloyed his palate like over-rich pastry." This powerful description of synesthesia demonstrates Bester's ability to pull the reader into a world that transcends words. (Jeff) Riggenbach noticed this pattern, commenting that "Bester's sentences are full of verbs and exclamation points. They are sentence fragments as often as they are sentences. Scenes and times change abruptly as they do in motion pictures and comic books, media in which action and dialogue are frequently the only methods of narration." His typographical games bring in vision but by trapping the reader "In the kaleidoscope of his own cross-senses" (Destination), Bester makes sound and motion come from the page. |
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Tim Blackmore, "The Bester/Chaykin Connection: An Examination of Substance Assisted by Style," Extrapolation 31, No. 2 (Summer 1990): 1023, 1056 |
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The Demolished Man. 1953. |
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"Who He?" (The Rat Race). 1953. |
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Tiger! Tiger! (The Stars My Destination). 1956. |
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Starburst. 1958. |
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The Dark Side of the Earth. 1964. |
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The Life and Death of a Satellite. 1966. |
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An Alfred Bester Omnibus (The Dark Side of the Earth, Tiger! Tiger!, The Demolished Man). 1967. |
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The Computer Connection (Extro). 1975. |
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The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester. 1976. 2 vols. |
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Golem100. 1980. |
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The Deceivers. 1981. |
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Experiment Perilous: Three Essays on Science Fiction (with Marion Zimmer Bradley and Norman Spinrad). 1983. |
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Tender Loving Rage. 1991. |
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