Sense of Wonder: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (Hugo Prize 1953) – ActuSF

Sense of Wonder returns every Thursday to the great classics of science fiction and fantasy, with Ugo Bellagamba, Laurent Queyssi and Jérôme Vincent. We will notably return to the Hugo Awards, the most famous prize linked to the imagination in the world.

Today, Laurent takes us to 1953 for the novel The Demolished Man d’Alfred Bester.

Here is the summary (according to Wikipedia):

“New York, 24th century. At night, Ben Reich, a wealthy businessman at the head of the multinational company “Monarch Utilities and Resources Inc.”, has terrible nightmares in which he is haunted by a “Faceless Man” who terrorizes him. By day, he is desperately looking for a way to stop his company’s financial losses due to his direct competitor, Cray D’Courtney. In a world that has not known assassinations for 79 years thanks to the use of telepathy, Ben Reich imagines the perfect crime that even the telepaths employed in the police will not be able to prevent. Once the irreparable has happened, his life will become nothing more than a frantic race to escape the traps set by Police Commissioner Lincoln Powell.“