The Stars My Destination (1956)

by Alfred Bester

The original title of Bester’s 1956 science fiction classic, Tiger! Tiger! better characterizes the first three quarters of the book than the published The Stars My Destination. The protagonist, Gully Foyle, begins as an unlikable, inarticulate, and utterly inconsiderate savage of a man with nowhere to go but up. Up he goes, albeit in fits and starts, learning physical sciences, deductive reasoning, spoken language, self-discipline, and social graces in pursuit of revenge on a merchant ship in the oligarch Presteign’s fleet, the S.S. Vorga.

On its own, Foyle’s vengeful journey to hell would not have made this novel stand out from the crowd. While interesting in formulation, the cast of supporting characters is largely lifeless and mechanical. The world built by Bester has aged surprisingly well in many ways and half a century later much the technological extrapolation would be at home if published today. However, the 1950s attitude towards women that plagues so much early sci-fi is present in full force and contributes to a stale and out-of-touch feeling when read in a modern context.

Towards the end of the novel it became clear that Tiger! Tiger! had finally turned into The Stars My Destination. Glimpses of the bigger picture introduced throughout the preceding pages were woven together into a spiritual crescendo befitting the optimism of the first space age. Gully’s immorally-motivated self-betterment brought him to realize that the only chains he ever wore were those he put on himself. Ceaseless pursuit of Vorga crafted a dead-end human into the one holding the fate of the Inner Planets in his hands; all he needed was the drive to unlock his true potential. This “bootstrapping” can be seen as the central moral of this story: reach hard enough for something and you’ll find it’s within grasp.