Billie Thompson reviewed The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (A Kangaroo book)
Review of 'The Demolished Man' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
So my big thing about detective novels is that I love the gathering of evidence, the grand reveal and generally there being some sense of mystery to the events. This novel does away with all that and simply follows the murderer. Which cut a lot of the pleasure for me.
Ostensibly this story is set in the future however it was largely irrelevant to the plot. This novel could just has easily be set now, or even when it was written and you could still make everything except the esp stuff work. Furthermore a lot of the technology simply wasn't explored, there were smart computers, however they didn't seem to be used by the characters beyond a couple of moments, interplanetary space travel, and out of phase safes, but they really didn't come into play. Seems like a bit of a waste.
The other thing that lost a star for …
So my big thing about detective novels is that I love the gathering of evidence, the grand reveal and generally there being some sense of mystery to the events. This novel does away with all that and simply follows the murderer. Which cut a lot of the pleasure for me.
Ostensibly this story is set in the future however it was largely irrelevant to the plot. This novel could just has easily be set now, or even when it was written and you could still make everything except the esp stuff work. Furthermore a lot of the technology simply wasn't explored, there were smart computers, however they didn't seem to be used by the characters beyond a couple of moments, interplanetary space travel, and out of phase safes, but they really didn't come into play. Seems like a bit of a waste.
The other thing that lost a star for me was the society. Much like the technology, despite some basic trappings it is firmly stuck in the year the novel was written. Women were all 2 dimensional and had no substance to the, society looks like a mad men episode, and given we are supposed to be an interplanetary system there is traditions beyond what feels like American 70s.
I would say that I can see how this was an influential novel, but times have moved on, and other than a historical exercise I wouldn't recommend this book.
