The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester · 1956
Bester rewrote *The Count of Monte Cristo* as pulp SF: a brutal, unstoppable revenge story set in a future where teleportation has transformed society. It has the best first chapter in SF and one of its finest antiheroes.
The case against
Gully Foyle, the engine of the book, rapes a woman early on and the novel treats it as one more brutal beat in his rise, which is harder to read past now than in 1956. The pulp prose is all velocity and little shading, the characters are cartoons, and the typographic fireworks at the climax read as a stunt. Thrilling, and dated in ways that matter.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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