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it is Vandaleur's alter-ego, the objective form which the good side of his character has taken. As the story progresses, Vandaleur begins killing people himself (Blenheim, Nan Webb) and even humming the android's song, "All Reet!"Vandaleur, who had been shocked by the murders that his android had committed and who had no reason for committing murder himself, except to protect the android whom he had no reason to protect. Most important of all: at the opening of the story we are told that androids cannot kill; this fact is repeatedly emphasized as the narrative develops, yet we are induced to disbelieve it, to attribute the merging identities to the android's psychotic projection, to pity Vandaleur. Bester works very skilfully to induce all this wrongheadedness in his readers, but he succeeds only if they disregard the evidence before them. Why should we not accept the facts as statedandroids can't killand look for an explanation of this android's impossible behavior, instead of accepting the specious explanation that " . . . looks like one android was made wrong." If we do this at the outset, every other clue in the story, the theory of psychotic projection, the heat, Vandaleur's irrational desire to keep the android, takes on new meaning and points to the truth: the evil, the impulse to murder and destroy, comes from Vandaleur to his android and not the other way around. On this view, also, the heat, the fire, the astronomical temperatures that seem so to affect the android's behavior, are merely the objective forms taken by Vandaleur's projected passions and compulsions. He not only projects his psychosis onto the android, but he also projects his splintered personality onto the world to create the heat, the fire, the smoke, the burnt orange sky that pursues him wherever he runs. All these thingsthe android, the furnaces, the heatare real, that is, have objective evidence, but their cause is Vandaleur's insane will. |
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Jeff Riggenbach, "Science Fiction as Will and Idea: The World of Alfred Bester," Riverside Quarterly 5, No. 3 (August 1972): 17071 |
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The most obvious stylistic antecedent to Bester's novels are the novels of A. E. Van Vogt, science fiction master of ingeniously complex plots and universe-wrecking superheroes. Perhaps the most interesting insight into how The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination were created is Bester's own contention that he read no science fiction at all between about 1942 and 1950 . . . thus missing out on a critical |
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