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Page 58
images thrown at you to make you think the book is still going on, and that's what it is, and all it is.
Algis Budrys, [Review of Golem100], Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 60, No. 1 (January 1981): 4041
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Carolyn Wendell
Bester is generally unconcerned with science, accurate or inaccurate. In a question-answer session at Seacon, 1979, Bester said: "I hate hard science fiction" and went on to explain that he is not even faintly interested in science fact and formula and will happily make it up as he goes along; his concern is people, and the science, valid or invalid, is a mere convenience to place people into stress situations.
And this is, without doubt, Bester's towering strength in science fiction where idea or plot usually takes precedence over character. For Bester, character is first. And the memorable aspects of Bester's work are seldom ideas or even plotting, but the people. How, exactly, Ben Reich (The Demolished Man) murders and is captured may be of far less significance than Ben himself, battling with all his wits to escape from his own deranged self. What Gully Foyle (The Stars My Destination) does to exact revenge stands out less than Gully himself, the mad, driven beast. Blaise Skiaki and Gretchen Nunn ("The Four-Hour Fugue") are involved in a peculiar mystery, but what fascinates is their characters, not the mystery. For most, or at least too much, science fiction, plot is all, and discussions of works often disintegrate into synopses. This is simply and emphatically not true of Bester's worksa plot summary would not enlighten (it might even confuse) without analysis of the people in the plot.
One of Bester's favorite character types is the obsessive, the person driven by internal needs not even the character himself understands. Ben Reich and Gully Foyle are obvious examples of this type. Aldiss, paraphrased earlier, calls Bester madso are Bester's characters. In the novel and short stories, insanity, or an insane aberration, is often the motivation, as evidenced by James Vandaleur ("Fondly Fahrenheit"); Blaise Skiaki ("The Four-Hour Fugue"); Peter Marko ("The Pi Man"); Jeffrey Halsyon ("5,271,009''); and John Strapp ("Time Is the Traitor"). Even those who lack the obvious symptoms of lunacy are not quite normaloften because they wish for something they can't have, like Addyer, the mousey statistician in "Hobson's Choice," or Henry Hassel, the brilliant scientist in "The Men

 
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