Alfred Bester

Reviews / Votes

"Readable, knowledgeable, insightful, and altogether a success."--James Gunn "This volume is a smart, compact examination of a writer who deserves more attention."--Science Fiction Studies
"With this book Professor Smith has made another lively contribution to understanding science fiction and its development, proving that an academic and scholarly overview can also be of interest and value to the 'fan'."--Camera Obscura

"Alfred Bester is an admirable monograph, in fact the very first on a grandmaster of the genre who has received shockingly little academic attention....For anyone approaching the study of Alfred Bester, Jad Smith's Alfred Bester serves as a commendable and valuable introduction to the formal qualities of his work." --Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts "Smith has laid out [Bester's] work with synoptically surgical precision. . . . remarkable and irreplaceable."--Galaxy's Edge "Jad Smith's work is a seminal study of Alfred Bester, given its close, extended readings of the author's whole oeuvre, with a duly pronounced emphasis on Bester's critically overlooked masterworks of The Demolished Man (1954) and The Stars, My Destination (1956)."--SFRA Review "Jad Smith appears to know everything about Alfred Bester's career, and there's no career in SF more worth knowing about. On the strength of two indispensable novels, three unreadable ones, and a couple of dozen short stories--some of them barely passable, but others astonishing--Bester electrified SF, fathering the New Wave and grandfathering cyberpunk. Jad Smith explains exactly how he did it."--Brian McHale, co-editor of The Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature