Abstract
The theme of religion pervades Stars and emerges in multiple ways, ranging from Cellar Christians and Gully’s transformation into a deterritorialized Anti-Christ to the “blind faith” required to jaunt, the mysticism of the Scientific People, and the sensory deprived Skoptsys who live like zombified monks in the caves of Mars. Subtly or indiscreetly, Bester has something to say about religion in every chapter. In particular, Gully’s lower-class gutter tongue “speaks” to his (anti)religious identity as well as the broader context of Bester’s SF authorship. Both the protagonist and the author are metaphorical exorcists who aspire to “cleanse” their respective worlds—one from the violence of upper-class tyranny and prejudice, the other from the limitations of SF writers who fail to live up to the genre’s great potential.
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Wilson, D.H. (2022). Speaking in Gutter Tongues. In: Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96946-2_6
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