Ahira's Hangar

This thread has spoilers for both Donaldson's Gap Cycle and Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination - you are warned!!!


I just finished up reading Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination for the first time.

This book won a Hugo back in the 1950's, and is considered a classic of the science fiction genre.

Wow, did I ever find it to be different.

It follows the story of Gulliver Foyle, an amoral wreck of a man obssessed with revenge after he is left behind to die on a drifting mostly destroyed space ship. He is as much animal as man, symbolized by the tiger face tattoo - brutal and cunning, ill educated, and obsessed and violent.

I think he is the direct inspiration for the Angus character in Stephen R. Donaldson's epic Gap Cycle - violent, stupid yet cunning, amoral, both murderers, both rapists, self-serving, and ugly as sin.

And both undergo complex medical procedures to enhance their bodies in order to have superhuman abilities, must find a way to deal with their rape victims, eventually find a sense of right and wrong, and change the future of mankind.


Has anyone else read both works? Thoughts, impressions?

They're pretty much the same guy, aren't they? I think that SRD mentioned somewhere in TGI that Foyle was a big influence. I really like Stars (read it a year or two ago); it was pretty weird for a book from the 50's, I thought.