Awesome
Science Fiction book, written in 1956 by
Alfred Bester. Originally published in the UK as "Tiger! Tiger!", from the first line of the
William Blake poem "
The Tyger". The book opens with "This was a Golden Age, a time of high
adventure, rich living, and hard dying . . . but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and
rapine, culture and vice. . . but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks. . . but nobody loved it."
The hero of the story is everyman personified,
Gulliver Foyle, a second class
machinist's mate, with the following
qualifications on his
merchant marine service card: "EDUCATION: NONE. SKILLS: NONE. MERITS: NONE. RECOMMENDATIONS:NONE". A man who never had a real
goal in his life, until his ship is torpedoed by an
enemy starship, and he is trapped in the wreckage for 170 days, in the sole airtight compartment, a
closet. Every day of that 170 is a
hellish fight for survival, until one day a ship arrives, answers his signal, and leaves him to die in the wreckage without a word of explanation. With that, Gully Foyle suddenly finds his purpose in life. To find the bastards who abandoned him, and make them pay.
Despite being written in the 1950s, The Stars My Destination isn't nearly as dated as one would think. The fact that
computers hardly existed then means they aren't present in the book at all to be botched like they were in 1980s SF. Bester was principly known as a writer of
comic books and television shows (he invented
Superman villain
Solomon Grundy and wrote the
Green Lantern Oath), so the narrative is action packed and relatively short. Highly recommended.