Alfred Bester was born on December 18, 1913, in Manhattan, New York City, USA. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he went to Columbia Law School but got tired and dropped out. In 1936 he married Rolly Goulko and their marriage lasted until her death in 1984.

In 1939, Alfred Bester made ​​his debut as a science fiction writer after winning a contest for amateurs publishing the story “The Broken Axiom” on “Thrilling Wonder Stories”. Bester kept on writing science fiction, at first for the magazine “Astounding” then for “Galaxy” but already in the ’40s he started writing stories for comics and radio scripts.

In 1952, Alfred Bester published his first novel, which is still his most famous, “The Demolished Man”, which won the Hugo Award. It’s a kind of science fiction detective story set in a complex future society in which there are many telepaths, who have their own guild. This novel has become a classic and has influenced various elements of the TV show “Babylon 5“.

In 1953, Alfred Bester published the novel “Who He?” about an alcoholic who wakes up and discovers that someone wants to destroy his life. Not belonging to any genre, it had limited success even though it was reprinted in paperback under the title “The Rat Race” and optioned to be adapted into a movie.

In 1956, Alfred Bester published his other masterpiece, “The Stars My Destination“, also known as “Tiger, Tiger”.

For some time, Alfred Bester and his wife traveled in Europe and there the author started writing articles about the various places he visited for the magazine “Holiday”. The editors were impressed by his work and commissioned him also interviews with celebrities. For this reason, his production in the field of science fiction dropped considerably.

At the end of the ’50s, Alfred Bester also started writing television scripts for several shows and in 1964 he became editor of the magazine “Holiday”, a job he kept until the end of its original version in 1971.

After working for several years as an editor, Alfred Bester started writing science fiction again in the ’70s, as in the first part of his career, especially short fiction. In 1975 he published the novel “The Computer Connection”, which was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards but received mixed comments from critics and readers.

In the mid-’70s, Alfred Bester started having progressive sight problems that made it increasingly difficult for him to work as a writer and screenwriter. Yet he still managed to publish several short stories and the novels “Golem¹⁰⁰” in 1980 and “The Deceivers” in 1981.

In the ’80s various health problems started plaguing Alfred Bester, aggravated by the death of his wife Rolly. A fall resulted in a fracture of his hip and because of its complications, he died on September 30, 1987.

In 1991, his novel mainstream “Tender Loving Rage” was posthumously published. It was written in the late ’50s but at the time remained unsold. Alfred Bester had started writing a final sci-fi novel, “Psycoshop“, which was completed by Roger Zelazny and published in 1998.

Alfred Bester had no heirs and left everything to his bartender, Joe Suder. According to a rumor, Suder didn’t remember the writer but this isn’t true because Bester went to his bar every day and the two of them were friends.

Alfred Bester’s life of was special and this is also seen in the variety of his work. He gave science fiction a few novels and much more short fiction. They’re enough, especially his two masterpieces, to remember him as a great master of science fiction.