'Aliens have taken the place of angels' - NP: Gibson

[Dave Monroe]

"Space/Time Employment Agency" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. i, p.
215)

"Anthroresearch Associates in Maiden Lane, New York,
where V.'s Benny Profane becomes a night watchmen and
meets the manikin's, seems a nod to the Alfred
Bester's The Demolished Man. There a guard works in a
Maiden Lane bank. Benny found his job at the
Space/Time Employment Agency, chapter sixteen of The
Demolished Man includes 'Space/d! Time' in the first
paragraph. Bester's novel was the basis for a 1959
opera libretto that Pynchon proposed to the Ford
Foundation for financial backing. The grant
application was denied."

http://web.archive.org/web/20010411052119/pynchonfiles.com/shock.htm

>From Harry Harrison's "Introduction" (pp. vii-x) to
the recent Vintage ed. of Bester's novel ...

"The reader is instantly pushed into a new
environment, hurtled along at top speed by the
language, the color, the wild invention that never
slows, never stops.  The world comes alive with the
people, machines, apparatus, emotions, and desires."
(viii)

"Some critics have compared this novel with the
Jacobean revenge plays." (ix)

"The author is unafraid.  He not only takes linguistic
risks but hurls himself into linguistic attacks.  New
words, grammar, and slang abound." (ix)

"The humor is always there, for Bester was a witty and
funny man, but it is often undercut in his novel.  A
scene can be horrible--or is it funny? or both at the
same time?" (ix)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=53533

--- Rcfchess at aol.com wrote:

> For multileveled visionary science fiction WAY
> before its time, have any of you read Alfred
> Bester's "The Stars My Destination"?! (& much of
> his other stuff, espec. The Demolished Man, is
> great as well)


		
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