The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester was the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1953, the first year that the award was presented. There is no list of other nominees, so I am not sure what other novels were considered competitors. However, I have read this one and I can say without reservation that the award was well deserved.
The year is 2301. Humanity has spread throughout the solar system. The society is dominated by Espers, telepaths aka peepers. Bester shines in his handling of both how peepers relate to each other, and in how peepers and normals relate.
Ben Reich, a non-peeper billionaire businessman, is driven by paranoia and nightmares to murder his largest business rival. He devises an intricate plan to commit the murder and to protect himself from peepers both before and after the crime. Lincoln Powell, police prefect and peeper, sets out to solve the case.
Intricacy follows intricacy at an unrelenting pace – ploy, counter-ploy, counter-counter-ploy, and so on. One amazing concept is what it means to be for a person to be demolished. Since that is central to the plot, I will leave that for the book.
This is science fiction at a very high level. Highly recommended.
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