Alfred Bester the Accidental Father of Cyberpunk

Between the foreboding depictions of new technology haplessly entangled with mankind and the omnipresence of sinister corporations Cyberpunk seems like a genre devised especially for the Internet age. The mere mention of the term conjures up visions of a foot chase through the neon rain slicked streets of future Los Angles, or the frantic Zen warrior Neo jamming an AC cable into his cerebellum. But what if I told you the birth of cyberpunk was happening at the same time... as the jitterbug? You might be skeptical, and so was I until I read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

(Some mild spoilers to follow)

Bester’s preposterously grizzled, lowlife anti-hero is about as Cyberpunk as it gets. We are introduced to Gulliver Foyle as the lone survivor of an interstellar shipwreck. After enduring six months in the wreck the lowly crewman’s only notable trait seems to be his penchant for self-preservation. When a passing ship ignores his obvious calls for help Gully vows revenge. The means by which he actuates his revenge cements him as one of the nastiest characters in science fiction. Foyle’s sick determination for revenge unleashes his brutal potential; his transformation from a simple brute to a brilliant cybernetic enhanced killing machine is surprisingly poignant. Bester’s unflinching depiction of multiple flavors of violence is intense, even by modern standards. It’s hard not to see the echoes of Gully Foyle in later archetypical cyberpunk heroes; he’s part Henry Dorsett, part Motoko Kusanagi, and a little bit Kwisatz Haderach.

Bester isn’t immune to the occasional bout of the anachronistic sniffles and his grasp of science is flaky at (most) times, however he delivers on the things that count, namely characters and world building. While reading The Stars My Destination I was consistently surprised at how contemporary the work felt. The world he creates is packed with prescient social commentary and technologies. From a rampant corporate oligarchy to a poor, technologically deprived underclass it’s hard not to see parallels to issues that could be ripped from today’s headlines.  All this and I haven’t even mentioned Jaunting, a central mechanic to the story whose social and technological ramifications are a topic worth discussing in and of itself. For the uninitiated, Jaunting is a form of personal teleportation that one may practice by willpower alone. The economic ramifications of the near complete removal of the need for personal transportation have resulted in a major restructuring of society on every level. Interestingly, this restructuring includes some unforeseen consequences including the fortification of woman of the upper classes in Jaunt Proof ™ rooms. Leading to a new Victorian age of culturally mandated sexual repression.

Bester’s also experiments with his writing in some radical ways. Psychedelic onomatopoeia abounds and the style of writing undergoes changes in parallel to our hero's accumulating intelligence. Bester uses language to viscerally immerse the reader in Foyle’s state of consciousness. Bester should be owed a great debt for taking the first strides on the fringe of a sub-genre that didn’t come into its own culturally, until after his death.  Whether or not Bester knew it at the time, the importance of his endeavor had far reaching effects. Many of the elements of Cyberpunk have been appropriated into the mainstream and are now inexorably linked to modern science fiction.