Alfred Bester Collection – Alfred Bester Free Audiobook

Written by Alfred Bester
Read by Various
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged

The Demolished Man: by Alfred Bester : Unbridged

Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy

Narrator: Jordan Law

Format: mp3

Length: 8:28

Summary:

Ben Reich, CEO of multiplanetary Monarch Enterprises, is the second most powerful man in the solar system. He is charming, enigmatic, ruthless, and dedicated, and obsessed with becoming the most powerful man in the solar system. So when a merger offer with arch-rival Craye D’Courtney is seemingly rejected out of hand, the only option left to him in his rage of thwarted ambition is something that hasn’t been done for seventy years: murder. With D’Courtney out of the way, Reich can take everything. All he has to do is get away with it.

But in the 24th century, extrasensory perception is a profession in its own right, with practitioners of various grades working in business, therapy, and — unfortunately for Reich — law enforcement. Espers, particularly the police force’s deep-peeping 1st graders, can easily detect intent before and guilt after the fact, making pre-meditated murder a barbarism of the past. Killing D’Courtney requires planning, allies, resources, a cool and meticulous approach — the very epitome of pre-meditation, and therefore, to all intents and purposes, an impossible task.

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Alfred Bester – Tiger Tiger – Unabridged

Read By: David Banks

Duration: 08:33

Description

Against the seething background of the 24th century the vengeful history of Gulliver Foyle begins. He has reached the age of 30 completely stunted by all lack of ambition and now the lethargic Gulley has been adrift for 170 days, fighting for survival with the passion of a beast in a trap…

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P.S.
I first read The Demolished Man when I was about twelve (and the book was about twenty something), and I remember being scared witless by it — not surprising really, since most of the people in it are psychopaths of one sort or another. But the raw story and much of its imagery stayed with me, and reading it again only serves to remind me that good writing — seriously good grab-you-by-the-eyeballs-and-squeeze-your-brain writing — never ages. Yes, there are anachronistic tickertape-spewing computers, and the principal ‘big idea’ of institutionalised ESP, while unashamedly science fictional, is also distinctly old hat and pulpy by now. But the consummate skill and rigour with which Bester deploys the ramifications of that big idea are far from old-fashioned — they are an invigorating cure for the hackneyed plotting and can’t-write-for-toffee criminality of much current SF.