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The Stars My Destination is, in one sense, a science-fiction adaption of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. It is the study of a man completely lacking in imagination or ambition, Gulliver Foyle. Fate transforms "Gully" Foyle in an instant; shipwrecked in space, then abandoned by a passing luxury liner, Foyle becomes a monomaniacal and sophisticated monster bent upon revenge. Wearing many masks, learning many skills, this "worthless" man pursues his goals relentlessly; no price is too high to pay.The Stars My Destination anticipated many of the staples of the later cyberpunk movement—the megacorporations as powerful as the governments, a dark overall vision of the future, the cybernetic enhancement of the body. To this it added the standard "one weird idea" of science fiction—that human beings could learn to teleport, or "jaunte" from point to point, with various personal limitations but one overall absolute limit: no one can jaunte through outer space. On the surface of a planet, the jaunte rules supreme; off it, mankind is still restricted to machinery.In this world, unlike that of Bester's other masterpiece The Demolished Man, telepathy is extremely rare, but does exist. One important character is able to send thoughts but not receive them. There are fewer than half a dozen full telepaths in all the worlds of the solar system.The protagonist, Gully Foyle, is introduced as "He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead..." Foyle is a cipher, a man with potential but no motivation, who is suddenly marooned in space. Even this is not enough to galvanize him beyond trying to find air and food on the wreck. But all changes when an apparent rescue ship deliberately passes him by, stirring him irrevocably out of his passivity.The scenario of the shipwrecked man ignored by passing ships came from a National Geographic Magazine story that Bester had read from World War II: A shipwrecked sailor had survived four months on a raft in the Pacific, and ships had passed him without picking him up, because their captains were afraid that the raft was a decoy to lure them into torpedo range of Japanese submarines. [1]
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