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| Author |
Title |
Publisher: |
Date |
Format |
| Alfred Bester |
The Demolished Man |
New York: Vintage |
1996 (Original Publication Date, 1951) |
Novel |
| Suggested
By: Jennifer Jones |
Added:
11/4/2001 |
| Last Modified:
11/4/2001 |
Comments:
Much of contemporary culture--as the energy driving the concept and the material fact of virtual reality exemplifies--is obsessed with visuality. As Jaron Lanier has written, VR is supposed to be a means of communicating by way of shared images rather than shared words (as the medium for representing the mind's thoughts). He intimates that this new mode of communication is newly soulful, transcending the power of words to allow us to share ourselves with others. In The Demolished Man, Bester creates a storyworld in which some people actually do have an unusual capacity to communicate and 'read' other people, as Lanier's VR model wishes for. (And like cyberpunk today, Bester traces the effects of such a 'technology' on culture and individuals alike.) Yet this ur-communication does not divorce itself from language; rather, language becomes both the conduit of communication for the characters to communicate with one another AND the bridge over the gap between these characters and ourselves, the readers of the novel. These characters are a special portion of the population known as 'Espers' in the context of Bester's novel, because they are clairvoyant. Whether they are actually 'special' or whether they are simply better at exploiting a capacity that all human beings actaully possess is unknown. At any rate, they can literally 'read' minds. They communicate without speaking out loud; yet they communicate with fellow Espers--in complex rhythms and patterns--through words. As some of the finest cyberpunk fiction has done (I am thinking of Neal Stephenson specifically), this novel beckons us to think about language as a technology in the same way that we think about VR--as powerful, possessive, alluring, hopeful. As Harry Harrison has written, in the Introduction to the 1996 re-issue of this novel, "Most of all, Bester is in love with language." I couldn't agree more. Harrison ends his Introduction with the words, "Thank you Alfie, thank you very very much." I just couldn't agree more.
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