Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester was born on this date, December 18, 1913. He passed away in 1987.  He’s best remembered for the novels The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man.  He started out writing short fiction and for comics, and along with his novels  his short fiction is some of the most innovative the field has seen.  See my review of “Fondly Fahrenheit” for an example.

Today I want to look at “The Men who Murdered Mohammed“, a time travel tale that has had a lasting impact on the field.  Told with wit and cheek, it’s the story of a brilliant scientist who comes home to discover his wife in the arms of another man. He wants revenge, so what does he do? Tell his secretary Maria to take a letter? No. Confront them then and there? No.  He builds a time machine and goes back to kill her grandfather before he married and had children.

He returns to find them just as he left them.  So he goes back and kills his wife’s grandmother. Same result. This sets him on a killing spree, but each time he returns to find everything the same, except that he’s becoming more insubstantial.

I’ll not tell anymore details but let you read the story if you’re interested. I haven’t read this story since I was in middle school, but the premise has stuck with me for, well, a long time. Upon rereading it, I was impressed with how Bester used math and advanced physics concepts so well. I don’t think I was educated enough to appreciate just what all Bester pulled off in this story.

Like I said earlier, the central idea in Bester’s model of time travel here is one that has been used multiple times since, with some authors taking it and running with it, and other putting their own twist on it.  I recall a story in Analog some years ago where a time traveler went back to kill Hitler.  He found a velvet rope , a sign saying “This way to kill Hitler”, and a line. “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” was referenced by name in the story.  (I wish I could recall who wrote it or what issue it was in.)

Bester, like many other authors of his generation, has sadly fallen into obscurity. That’s a shame because a lot of these people with little to no knowledge of the field who think they’re brilliant and original could learn a thing or two from him.