Wow, that is one serious pile of New Wave, thick with the style of the time and almost dizzying to hack through.

There was a strain of exuberant writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s and this is solidly in that vein. It ranged from Hunter S. Thompson to Richard Brautigan and beyond. This is solidly in that micro-tradition.

Let go and join the flow. Don't try to figure out the science or the slang or any of those things you are used to digging into in an SF novel. This is a wild ride with fireworks at every turn.

This book got better as it went on. The first few pages were almost incomprehensible in it's amount of slang that is unexplained.

E.g., the first sentence:

I tore down the Continental Shelf off the Bogue Bank while the pogo made periscope hops trying to track me.

What??

But as I read through the book it actually began to make more and more sense, and by the middle I was actually invested in the characters and story.

Something about this book made me want to read it at break-neck speed, I don't have the energy to dissect Bester's writing, but it lent itself to speed-reading.

3.5/5 stars, If you got it in the Humble Bundle like I did, feel free to jump in. I wouldn't recommend going out and buying it though.

Reading this feels like hallucinating wildly while someone beats you with a 2x4. By the time you finish this frenetic madness, you'll feel like you've been bludgeoned by far, far too much plot and not nearly enough sense. I had quite enjoyed Bester's The Stars My Destination, but I can't say I enjoyed anything about this, other than the limited excitement of wondering what rabbit trail of insanity the story would run down next. Two stars rather than one because Bester's spendthrift, nutty creativity does elicit gruding admiration in me, but otherwise a psychedelic disaster.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3287464.html

Very much in the shadow of Bester's better-known The Demolished Man (winner of the first Hugo for Best Novel) and The Stars My Destination, this was his first novel for almost 20 years when it came out in 1974. Critical reaction then was disappointed; Bester had perhaps laid the path for the New Wave writers of the intervening period but was now behind the curve. Forty years on, I must say I enjoyed it a lot; the plot concerns a group of immortals in the very near future, who are dealing with a supercomputer that has acquired human intelligence, and the style remains pyrotechnical - and yet I never lost track of what was going on, or why we should care about these characters. Bester's reading of Native American traditions would not really pass muster today, but in fact he uses the perspective of his Cherokee characters to make some statements about American society in general and to an extent also about gender politics. I came away feeling that his has been underrated and might be due a reappraisal.

Alfred Bester is unquestionably one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time. [b:The Stars My Destination|333867|The Stars My Destination|Alfred Bester|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298507693s/333867.jpg|1398442] and [b:The Demolished Man|76740|The Demolished Man|Alfred Bester|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360171879s/76740.jpg|1247570] are absolute classics.

This book is not of the same caliber.

It's not entirely without merit - Bester does do some interesting things with language, similar to his other works. And it has some genuinely funny slapstick moments.

But for the most part it's just not very good. It moves too quickly, the gags (linguistic or otherwise) don't always work, and it all falls flat.

I'm glad I read it...but I wouldn't recommend others do the same. Read his celebrated works. Skip this one.

This shit was cray... Possibly I will come back later and say more, but for now I'll just say that it was like a giant trip.

Stylistically another wonder by Bester, but the execution gets sloppy and falls off near the end. Somewhere around the second act, definitely after the marriage and before the underground meeting, I discovered that while I was laughing appreciatively at the absurdities and quirks of this interesting word Mr. Bester offers us here, I was sleeping through whatever threadbare storytelling was going on. The bulk of the action relies heavily on plot details being told through the world-building and it’s easy to go a bit glazed in the eye while reading. Worthwhile for fans of alternate history/pulp-ish spec fiction, and it’s clearly been influential in certain circles, but this one is a swing and a miss overall. (Bonus points to Bester for imagining a future in which caucasians are inbred self-indulgent morons. That took real cajones to throw at science fiction readers/writers/publishers in the mid-70s.)

Alfred Bester's first science fiction novel since The Stars My Destination was a major event-a fast-moving adventure story set in Earth's future. A band of immortal-as charming a bunch of eccentrics as you'll ever come across-recruit a new member, the brilliant Cherokee physicist Sequoya Guess. Dr. Guess, with group's help, gain control of Extro, the supercomputer that controls all mechanical activity on Earth. They plan to rid Earth of political repression and to further Guess's researches-which may lead to a great leap in human evolution to produce a race of supermen. But Extro takes over Guess instead and turns malevolent. The task of the merry band suddenly becomes a fight in deadly earnest for the future of Earth. .

**