Read this some years ago and can't really remember it, but my notes at the time say "didn't like it, didn't like the characters, especially the protagonist". ( )

I intensely disliked main character, Gulliver Foyle, as an individual and really wasn't sure I wanted to keep reading, but about a third through I started thinking of him as a personification of the struggle of the lumpenproletariat to achieve class consciousness, and that seemed to work for me, though I wasn't sure if that was Bester's intention. Ultimately, it did work that way for me, and the story is, if imperfectly, a dramatised sci-fi setting of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the "cosmic" ending symbolising Foyle's awakening to his potential as a revolutionary liberationist figurehead. It was worth sticking with.

A couple of the names struck me as being symbolic, though I'm struggling to fully integrate them, so maybe I'm pareidolically seeing what's not there:

• Gulliver Foyle - Gullible Foil - Gullible Fool
• Presteign - Pristine - Prestige - Priest-Stain ( )

A dude is on a quest to destroy a spaceship for a stupid reason and apparently becomes superhuman because of this I guess. Not exactly a thrilling page turner in that sense. Full of "oh no something has happened re something I made up! But it's ok a page later because it's resolved with more stuff I made up" crap - these devices aren't used to produce drama, they're straight "situation described, dude's gonna die, oh no he isn't anymore" things. The bane of "hard sci-fi": the plot feeling stupid because something new can always be made up. Conveniently you can't teleport if you don't know where you are (I think?) even though that doesn't really make sense and isn't consistent.

Teleportation is accomplished in several instances - eg in the star chamber - where people can't possibly know exactly where they are. Yet somehow a hospital which everyone knows the location of and the criminal underworld has mapped out can't be teleported out of because it's *dark*? Seriously? It also feels stupid that they don't mention the issue of the planet moving in space at all - not important to plot but a weird omission for this kind of sci-fi. Someone brings up the problem of telefragging on the platforms EVERYONE uses to teleport between but there's no reason given for why it doesn't happen (people materialising in other people). Rich people apparently use normal transport instead of teleporting, which is ass-backward: in modern day society rich people use faster transport, and here the difference is an order of magnitude greater, making rich people waste ridiculous amounts of time.

A few reviews say the main character is unlikable, but it's not even that - he's just a void of character. This is part of the point, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to follow along. In general the characters are super weak - I don't expect much from sci-fi but the first love interest's relation to the main character is completely incoherent. She wants to get a tattoo off his face and then refuses to pay 1000 more for anasthetic because she wants him to feel pain??? The book offers no explanation. I can't think of one.

In summary, fails as a character piece, an exploration of teleportation and as a page-turning plot-focused pulp novel. Rubbish. ( )

Whichever top science fiction book list I found this on is now dead to me. ( )

A great read, definitely a classic. Not sure that I really bought the main character's rapid self-transformation from clueless idiot into Batman, but it was still a non-stop flurry of ideas. The last couple of chapters are fairly mind-bending and kind of blur past, but this is certainly worth any science fiction fan's time. ( )