Alfred "Alfie" Bester (December 18, 1913 – September 30, 1987) was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. Though successful in all these fields, he is probably best remembered today for his work as a science fiction author, and as the winner of the first Hugo Award in 1953 for his novel
The Demolished Man.
Biography Alfred Bester was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 18, 1913. His father James owned a shoe store, and was a first-generation American whose parents were both Austrian. Alfred's mother, Belle, was born in Russia and spoke Yiddish as her first language before coming to America as a youth. Alfred was James and Belle's second and final child, and only son. (Their first child, Rita, was born in 1908.) Though his father was of Jewish background, and his mother became a Christian Scientist, Alfred Bester himself wasn't raised within any religious traditions.
Bester attended the University of Pennsylvania where he was a member of the Philomathean Society. He went on to Columbia Law School, but tired of it and dropped out. Bester and Rolly Goulko married in 1936. Rolly Bester had a successful career as a Broadway, radio and television actress before changing careers to become an advertising executive during the 1960s. The Besters remained married for 48 years until her death on January 12, 1984. Bester was very nearly a lifelong New Yorker, although he lived in Europe for a little over a year in the mid-1950s and moved to Pennsylvania with Rolly in the early 1980s. Once settled there, they lived on Geigel Hill Road in Ottsville, Pennsylvania.
Writing career
Early SF career, comic books, radio (1939–50)After his university career, 25-year-old Alfred Bester was working in public relations when he turned to writing science fiction. Bester's first published short story, "The Broken Axiom," was published in
Thrilling Wonder Stories (April 1939) after winning an amateur story competition. Reputedly, this competition was arranged by editors who knew Bester and were favorably inclined toward his early work as a way of giving him a break into the field. This contest, incidentally, was also the same amateur story contest that Robert A. Heinlein famously opted not to enter — the prize was only $50, and Heinlein realized that he could do better by selling his 7,000-word unpublished story to
Astounding Science Fiction for a penny a word, or $70. Bester and Heinlein later became friends and joked about the incident.
For the next few years, Bester continued to publish short fiction, most notably in John W. Campbell's
Astounding Science Fiction (ASF) . In 1942, two of his science fiction editors got work at DC Comics, and invited Bester to contribute to various DC titles. Consequently, Bester left the field of short story writing and began working for DC Comics as a writer on
Superman,
Green Lantern and other titles. It is popularly believed that Bester wrote the version of the Green Lantern Oath: "In brightest day, In blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power, green latern's light".
Bester was also the writer for Lee Falk's comic strips
The Phantom and
Mandrake the Magician while their creator served in World War II. It is widely speculated how much influence Bester had on these comics. One theory claims that Bester was responsible for giving the Phantom his surname, "Walker".
After four years in the comics industry, in 1946 Bester turned his attention to radio scripts, after wife Rolly (a busy radio actress) told him that the show
Nick Carter, Master Detective was looking for story submissions. Over the next few years, Bester wrote for Nick Carter, as well as
The Shadow, Charlie Chan, Nero Wolfe and other shows. He later wrote for
The CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
With the advent of American network television in 1948, Bester also began writing for television, although most of these projects were lesser-known.
In early 1950, after eight years away from the field, Bester resumed writing science fiction short stories. However, after an initial return to Astounding with the story "The Devil's Invention" (aka "Oddy and Id"), he stopped writing for the magazine in mid-1950 when editor John Campbell became preoccupied with L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, the forerunner to Scientology. Bester then turned to Galaxy Science Fiction, where he found in H. L. Gold another exceptional editor as well as a good friend.
The classic period: 1951–57In his first period of writing science fiction (1939–1942), Bester had been establishing a reputation as a short story writer in science fiction circles with stories such as "Adam and No Eve". However, Bester gained his greatest renown for the work he wrote and published in the 1950s, including
The Demolished Man and
The Stars My Destination (also known as
Tiger! Tiger!).
The Demolished Man (1953)The Demolished Man, recipient of the first Hugo Award for best Science Fiction novel, is a police procedural that takes place in a future world in which telepathy is relatively common. Bester creates a harshly capitalistic, hierarchical and competitive social world that exists without deceit: a society where the right person with some skill (or money) and curiosity can access your memories, secrets, fears and past misdeeds more swiftly and with greater alacrity than even you.
Originally published in three parts in
Galaxy, beginning in January 1952,
The Demolished Man appeared in book form in 1953. It was dedicated to Gold, who made a number of suggestions during its writing. Originally, Bester wanted the title to be Demolition!, but Gold talked him out of it.
Who He? aka The Rat Race (1953) Bester's 1953 novel Who He? concerned a TV game show host who wakes up after an alcoholic blackout and discovers that someone is out to destroy his life. A contemporary novel with no science-fiction elements, it did not receive wide attention. It did, however, earn Bester a fair amount of money from the sale of the paperback reprint rights (the book appeared in paperback as
The Rat Race). As well, Bester received a substantial sum of money from a movie studio for the film option to the book. Purportedly, Jackie Gleason was interested in starring as the game show host; however no movie was ever made of
Who He? Still, the payout from the film option was large enough that Alfred and Rolly Bester decided they could afford to travel to Europe for the next few years. They lived mainly in Italy and England during this period.
The Stars My Destination (1956)Bester's next novel was outlined while he was living in England and mostly written when he was living in Rome. The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger, Tiger) had its origins in a newspaper clipping that Bester found about Poon Lim, a shipwrecked World War II sailor on a raft, who had drifted unrescued in the Pacific for a world record 133 days because passing ships thought he was a lure to bring them within torpedo range of a hidden submarine. From that germ grew the story of Gully Foyle, seeking revenge for his abandonment and causing havoc all about him: a science fiction re-telling of Alexandre Dumas'
The Count of Monte Cristo with teleportation added to the mix. It has been described as an ancestor of cyberpunk.
As had occurred with
The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination was originally serialized in
Galaxy. It ran in four parts (October 1956 through January 1957) and the book was published later in 1957. Though repeatedly voted in polls the "Best Science Fiction Novel of All Time',
The Stars My Destination would prove to be Bester's last novel for 19 years. A radio adaptation was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1991.
Magazine fiction and non-fiction: 1959–62While on his European trip, Bester began selling non-fiction pieces about various European locations to the mainstream travel/lifestyle magazine
Holiday. The
Holiday editors, impressed with his work, invited Bester back to their headquarters in New York and began commissioning him to write travel articles about various far-flung locales, as well as doing interviews with such stars as Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn. As a result of steady work with Holiday, Bester's science fiction output dropped precipitously in the years following the publication of
The Stars My Destination.
Bester published three short stories each in 1958 and 1959, including 1958's "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" and 1959's "The Pi Man", both of which were nominated for Hugo Awards. However, for a four-year period from October 1959 to October 1963, he published no fiction at all. Instead, he concentrated on his work at
Holiday (where he was made a senior editor), reviewed books for
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (from 1960 to 1962) and returned to television scripting.
Television: 1959–62 In 1959, Bester adapted his 1954 story "Fondly Fahrenheit" to television as Murder and the Android. Telecast in color on October 18, 1959, the hour-long drama took place in the year 2359 amid futuristic sets designed by Ted Cooper. This NBC Sunday Showcase production, produced by Robert Alan Aurthur with a cast of Kevin McCarthy, Rip Torn, Suzanne Pleshette and Telly Savalas, was reviewed by syndicated radio-television critic John Crosby:
Despite the fact that the androids refer contemptuously to human beings as people who suffer from glandular disorders called emotions, Torn wants very much to suffer from these disorders himself. Eventually, he does. I have no intention of unraveling the whole plot which was not so much complicated as psychologically dense. If I understand him correctly, Mr. Bester is trying to say that having androids to free us of mundane preoccupations like work is by no means good for us. His humans are pretty close to being bums.
Murder and the Android was nominated for a 1960 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was given a repeat on September 5, 1960, the Labor Day weekend in which that Hugo Award was presented (to
The Twilight Zone) at the World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh. Bester returned to Sunday Showcase March 5, 1960 with an original teleplay,
Turn the Key Deftly. Telecast in color, that mystery, set in a traveling circus, starred Julie Harris, Maximilian Schell and Francis Lederer.
For
Alcoa Premiere, hosted by Fred Astaire, he wrote Mr. Lucifer, which aired November 1, 1962 with Astaire in the title role opposite Elizabeth Montgomery.
[edit] Senior editor of Holiday: 1963–71After a four year layoff, Bester published a handful of science-fiction short stories in 1963 and 1964. However, writing science-fiction was at this stage in Bester's life clearly more of a sideline than the focus of his career. As a result, from 1964 until the original version of
Holiday folded in 1971, Bester published only one science-fiction short story, a 700-word science fiction spoof in the upscale mainstream magazine
Status.
Still, as senior editor of Holiday, Bester was able to introduce occasional science-fiction elements into the non-fiction magazine. On one occasion, he commissioned and published an article by Arthur C. Clarke describing a tourist flight to the Moon. Bester himself, though, never published any science fiction in Holiday, which was a mainstream travel/lifestyle magazine marketed to upscale readers during an era when science fiction was largely dismissed as juvenilia.
Later career: 1972–87Holiday magazine ceased publication in 1971, although it was later revived and reformatted by other hands, without Bester's involvement. For the first time in nearly 15 years, Bester did not have full-time employment.
After a long layoff from writing science fiction, Bester returned to the field in 1972. His 1974 short story "The Four-Hour Fugue" was nominated for a Hugo Award, and Bester received Hugo and Nebula Award nominations for his 1975 novel
The Computer Connection (titled
The Indian Giver as a magazine serial and later reprinted as
Extro). Despite these nominations, Bester's work of this era generally failed to receive the critical or commercial success of his earlier period.
Bester's eyesight began failing in the mid-1970s, making writing increasingly difficult, and another layoff from published writing took place between early 1975 and early 1979. It is alleged during this period that the producer of the 1978
Superman movie sent his son off to search for a writer. The name Alfred Bester came up, but Bester wanted to focus the story on Clark Kent as the real hero, while Superman was only "his gun." The producers instead hired Mario Puzo, author of
The Godfather, to write the film.
Bester published two short stories in 1979 and rang in the 1980s with the publication of two new novels:
Golem100 (1980), and
The Deceivers (1981). In addition to his failing eyesight, other health issues began to affect him, and Bester produced no new published work after 1981. His wife Rolly died in 1984.
In 1985, it was announced that Bester would be Guest of Honor at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Brighton. As the event neared, however, Bester fell and broke his hip. With his worsening overall health, he was plainly too ill to attend. Doris Lessing stepped in as a last-minute replacement.
Bester died less than a month after the convention from complications related to his broken hip. However, shortly before his death he learned that the Science Fiction Writers of America would honor him with their Grand Master Nebula award at their 1988 convention.
Two works by Bester were issued posthumously. The first,
Tender Loving Rage (1991), was a mainstream (i.e., non-science fiction) novel that was probably written in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The second,
Psychoshop (1998), was based on an incomplete 92-page story fragment. It was completed by Roger Zelazny and remained unpublished until three years after Zelazny's death. When issued, it was credited as a collaborative work.
Alfred Bester had no children, and according to legend, left everything to his bartender, Joe Suder. That much is, in fact, true. However, the claim that Suder didn't know or remember Bester is legend rather than fact; Bester stopped by Suder's bar every morning on his way to get his mail, and the two men were friends.
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