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A review by graslund
Golem 100 by Alfred Bester
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Alfred Bester you bastard.
This is the most bizarre book I have ever read. Almost every single aspect of it baffles me. It is incredibly dense in different concepts and ideas, all of them batshit insane in at least three different ways. The book throws a googol of different things at the proverbial wall but coats them all in glue beforehand to assure they'll all stick, no matter if they deserve to or not. Absurd ideas are mentioned in passing as if they were the most normal thing in the world, and then never once brought up again.
I, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed my time reading this book. I am not sure whether I was laughing with it most of the time, or at it. It is at the same time dark and misanthropic, whilst being goofy as all hell and unable to take itself or anything seriously, depicting one of the most bizarre dystopian futures I've ever seen. It is entirely bleak and hopeless, and yet not a single character seems to care at all. The "old world" is referenced heavily, but only to demonstrate how little anyone seems to actually care about it.
A decent chunk of the book is comprised of images, mostly abstract, which are almost all quite visually interesting. One of the very few things I feel confident in my opinion about, is that the illustrations were quite well done and made for an interesting change of pace. The fucking around with different fonts (and the text in general) is something I quite liked in one of Bester's previous novels, The Stars My Destination, but It felt a little overused in this novel, and wasn't as well connected to the narrative.
The book is completely unafraid of shocking the reader. Basically any content warning you could come up with could apply to this book to some extent. Absolutely horrid actions (a decent amount of sexual violence, for instance) and words (a lot of what at least today would be considered slurs) pass by the pages without being given a second glance. And yet this particular part doesn't feel particularly spiteful. I never got the feeling that Bester held any hate towards any particular group (save perhaps humanity as a whole). The competent characters (of which there are few, I might add) are mostly non-white, and having a black woman with plenty of agency be the protagonist of your old-timey sci-fi book was a nice change of pace, even if she was written by a white man. The book also seems to want to be seen as strangely feminist, at least towards the end (which I won't spoil, though I'm not sure if I even could).
The book is an incredible time capsule of the time it was written in. There are tons of references to the pop-psychology of the adult years of Bester's life, with the concepts of Freud and Jung being exhibited multiple times both explicitly and implicitly.
I really don't know what to think of this book. I do not regret reading it, but it is a book that I would essentially never recommend to anyone I know. That being said, I enjoyed because of how god damned insane it was. If you've read this review and thought it sounds interesting, and you're willing to put up with a lot of bullshit, then by all means do give it a look.
For my rating, I've decided to eschew trying to determine any kind of "objective quality" and am going purely on enjoyment in the moment of reading. Trying to rate this book on quality is a task I leave for any soul brave enough to try it (braver than me, at least).
This is the most bizarre book I have ever read. Almost every single aspect of it baffles me. It is incredibly dense in different concepts and ideas, all of them batshit insane in at least three different ways. The book throws a googol of different things at the proverbial wall but coats them all in glue beforehand to assure they'll all stick, no matter if they deserve to or not. Absurd ideas are mentioned in passing as if they were the most normal thing in the world, and then never once brought up again.
I, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed my time reading this book. I am not sure whether I was laughing with it most of the time, or at it. It is at the same time dark and misanthropic, whilst being goofy as all hell and unable to take itself or anything seriously, depicting one of the most bizarre dystopian futures I've ever seen. It is entirely bleak and hopeless, and yet not a single character seems to care at all. The "old world" is referenced heavily, but only to demonstrate how little anyone seems to actually care about it.
A decent chunk of the book is comprised of images, mostly abstract, which are almost all quite visually interesting. One of the very few things I feel confident in my opinion about, is that the illustrations were quite well done and made for an interesting change of pace. The fucking around with different fonts (and the text in general) is something I quite liked in one of Bester's previous novels, The Stars My Destination, but It felt a little overused in this novel, and wasn't as well connected to the narrative.
The book is completely unafraid of shocking the reader. Basically any content warning you could come up with could apply to this book to some extent. Absolutely horrid actions (a decent amount of sexual violence, for instance) and words (a lot of what at least today would be considered slurs) pass by the pages without being given a second glance. And yet this particular part doesn't feel particularly spiteful. I never got the feeling that Bester held any hate towards any particular group (save perhaps humanity as a whole). The competent characters (of which there are few, I might add) are mostly non-white, and having a black woman with plenty of agency be the protagonist of your old-timey sci-fi book was a nice change of pace, even if she was written by a white man. The book also seems to want to be seen as strangely feminist, at least towards the end (which I won't spoil, though I'm not sure if I even could).
The book is an incredible time capsule of the time it was written in. There are tons of references to the pop-psychology of the adult years of Bester's life, with the concepts of Freud and Jung being exhibited multiple times both explicitly and implicitly.
I really don't know what to think of this book. I do not regret reading it, but it is a book that I would essentially never recommend to anyone I know. That being said, I enjoyed because of how god damned insane it was. If you've read this review and thought it sounds interesting, and you're willing to put up with a lot of bullshit, then by all means do give it a look.
For my rating, I've decided to eschew trying to determine any kind of "objective quality" and am going purely on enjoyment in the moment of reading. Trying to rate this book on quality is a task I leave for any soul brave enough to try it (braver than me, at least).