he Nomad is a dead ship. Destroyed and drifting through the war-torn solar system, it is derelict--but not empty. One crewman survived, a man named Gully Foyle. Foyle is getting used to the constant imminence of death, until his routine is shaken when a ship unexpectedly appears. But the ship, named the Vorga, ignores Foyle's desperate flares and passes him by.
Something snaps in Foyle as he watches the ship recede into space. He discovers a long-dormant ambition and cunning, driven now by an all-consuming obsession: finding Vorga and exacting vengeance.
His motivation unleashed, Foyle painstakingly figures out how to send Nomad sputtering toward the Jupiter colonies. He nearly dies before being rescued. His benefactors are the savage descendants of scientist explorers; they tattoo his face with wild swirls to match their own and brand a name across his forehead--Nomad.
Foyle blasts his way out of their settlement and makes it back to Earth barely alive. On Earth, he learns that Vorga's owner is the most exalted of robber-barons, Presteign of Presteign. But Presteign has a matching interest in Foyle. As Nomad's sole survivor, he alone knows the whereabouts of its secret, priceless cargo.
Presteign's agents capture Foyle and torture him to make him talk, but Foyle endures the suffering and escapes. More than that, he's learned from his captors that Nomad had precious cargo, and money would make hunting Vorga's crew much easier. He recovers Nomad's remains, narrowly escaping both Presteign's agents and the Scientific People as well.
Foyle now adopts a false name to worm his way into elite society. Meanwhile, he's hunting Vorga's crew. Each crew member dies before talking, however, deepening Foyle's suspicions that Nomad wasn't what it seemed. Foyle now has one remaining lead: Presteign of Presteign himself, who's relentlessly seeking Nomad's lone survivor.
The very best of Alfred Bester
Always included on lists of the best SF novels ever written, The Stars My Destination glows like fresh coal with the heat of its magnificent creation, Gulliver Foyle. This tiger who roars against eternity is provocative and disturbing, staying with the reader long after the book is put aside. Yet Foyle is a simulacrum. He is an embodiment of rage and folly, of humanity's malevolence and our own response to it, and of our own strengths and limitations.
His overpowering presence makes the background recede like reticent children, but the background of this slim, richly textured novel is worthy of its complex protagonist. Both literally branded with the label "Nomad" and given the name of a character who journeyed among distant allegories, Gulliver Foyle does indeed travel far and wide in his dark quest. Every destination is infused with wicked social commentary, from the appalling mental hospital to the warrens of the Scientific People to the ballrooms of the ruling tycoons. In each of these scenes, Bester displays a remarkable ability to wield humor and censure in the same breath. Simultaneously, these vignettes form the thread of a detective tale, as Foyle tracks down the man who heartlessly ordered Vorga to pass him by.
One element of the story is so fundamental that it nearly escapes mention. This is humanity's newfound ability to "jaunte," or travel hundreds of miles through the focused power of the mind. This revolutionary discovery has already jarred and transformed the society in which Foyle lives. Bester carefully segregates the novelty of jaunting into a prologue and then gets on with the story, demystifying this amazing discovery into the everyday tool it is for Foyle and the others.
