Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

I discovered The Stars My Destination through the unceasing and fervent recommendations of Ty Schintzius. He said it was the best science fiction novel he'd ever read. I ordered it for him and read it a few days later. Now I almost fully agree. Only a masterpiece like Dune could equal it, and Bester's work may top it anyway. Not surprisingly, the novel is ill-known; but in an age where the most-watched YouTube channel is some mid-adolescent squeaking in a chipmunk voice, one can expect little from hoi polloi. At any rate, novel is one giant F.U. to Tolstoy's War and Peace, for history is not a blind, unintelligible force; here, one man changes the future of all mankind. In the same vein, the novel is concerned with the understanding of man; what he is and what he may become. What it is that makes someone a man is still unclear, for Gully Foyle doesn't quite seem like a man (more like a wolf, oftentimes); thus, it seems Bester doesn't really answer these questions (yet, that is; more careful readings might reveal something later). But he does suggest that whatever man's true nature is (and perhaps it is more animalistic than we might expect), it is forever and always tied to greatness. 

Gully Foyle is my name

And Terra is my nation

Deep space is my dwelling place

The stars my destination.