Vonnegut wrote an Introduction in The Demolished Man, a 1953 novel by Alfred Bester that was republished in 1986 by The Easton Press, featuring illustrations by Vincent DiFate.
Summary[]
Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1952, which featured the first installment of The Demolished Man
The increasingly open and casual use of "the Anglo-Saxon word for sexual intercourse" has, in Vonnegut's opinion, led to a decline of eloquence in general and almost completely killed the impact of the word itself. However, one of its compound words, "mindfuck", is a useful addition to the language and describes very well what speculative fiction authors, such as Bester, do in their works. They produce "memorable and satisfying surprises for our skulls rather than our genitals", often by imagining a world not dissimilar to the present one. The Demolished Man, at its core, is a commentary on the "sociopathic over-achievers" who, through technology and the power of "thoroughly amoral institutions", have become the superstars of civilization since World War Two.
To tell a compelling story requires keeping the reader in suspense. At the same time, authors casually write about other things they actually find much more interesting. Hamlet, for example, discusses almost everything important about life, but framing it as "marginalia to a junky murder mystery". The faceless man in this novel serves the same function and the answer of his identity is simple "pop Freudianism" that hasn't aged well. The novel is not the mystery of the faceless man, but the mystery of Ben Reich, who dreams about him. The reader is meant to ask what produces people such as Reich—whose actions make societies the way they are—and how much worse such people may yet become. In the term "mindfuck", the implication is of "seduction and not rape". Many readers' reluctance toward speculative fiction comes from the horror of being seduced by something like it.[1]
- ↑ "Introduction", The Demolished Man (1986).