The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester · 1953
The first Hugo Award winner, 1953. A millionaire plans the perfect murder in a society where telepathic police can read minds. Bester's typographic experiments and kinetic prose set the standard for sophisticated SF thriller writing.
The case against
Pure 1950s Freud holds up the plot: the solution to Reich's perfect murder is an Oedipal twist that now lands as kitsch. Worse, Barbara D'Courtney spends half the book regressed to infancy while the detective courts her, a romance the decades have soured. Bester's typography still crackles; the psychology underneath is period furniture.
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