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Alfred Bester
19301987
Alfred Bester was born in Manhattan on December 18, 1913, to James J. and Belle Silverman Bester. Although his mother was a Christian Scientist, Bester was raised as a middle-class Jew. He attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where, he recalls in his autobiographical essay, "My Affair with Science Fiction" (1975), he tried to be a renaissance man and only distinguished himself on the fencing team. Years before Bester attended college, he had discovered Hugo Gemsback's science fiction magazines, which inaugurated his love-hate relationship with the field.
Upon graduation in 1935 Bester enrolled in law school. The following year he married Rolly Goulko, an actress. Unsure about pursuing a career in law, he tried his hand at writing science fiction. He submitted his first effort, "Diaz-X," to Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1939. With the guidance of editors Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff, Bester polished the story and entered it in the magazine's contest for best story by an amateur under the title "The Broken Axiom." It won, over Robert A. Heinlein's "Lifeline" (which would later become Heinlein's first professional sale at Astounding Science Fiction), and proved the first of fourteen stories Bester would publish in such science fiction pulps as Thrilling Wonder Stories, Astonishing Stories, Amazing, and ultimately Astounding over the next three years.
In 1942 Bester followed the lead of Weisinger, Schiff, and many science fiction authors and turned to plotting and writing scenarios for Superman, Batman, and other comic books before moving on to the scripting of science fiction radio shows. Although he virtually disappeared from science fiction, he acknowledged the lessons he learned about action and pacing during these years as among the reasons for the tremendous success of his first novel, The Demolished Man, when it was published in 1953. A detectivecum-science fiction story about a murder committed in a future society where extrasensory perception has rendered crime nearly impossible, it was remarkable for its depiction of an entire culture shaped by the benefits of ESP and its handling of Freudian insights into the motivations of its characters.

 
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