Architectures of Psyche, Power, and Patriarchy

Abstract

A distinct social division of classes typifies Stars’s twenty-fifth century, as does an egregious misogyny and underlying racism. All three issues come to bear in the persona of Gully Foyle. Throughout the novel, he slowly transcends these proverbial constructs of culture, which comment on the ethics of the SF genre as well as Bester himself, who is a product of his own patriarchal culture and SF’s endorsement of it. Bester’s fascination with Freudian psychology threaded into much of his writing and came to a crux in Stars, scaffolding character desires (i.e., inner space) and technoculture at large (i.e., outer space). His attitudes toward class, gender, and race are at once progressive and regressive. On the whole, however, he was more evolved than his contemporaries and made strides toward greater equality despite his own construction and entitlement as a white male author.