Bester's primary talent is as a storyteller, and in The Demolished Man he approaches his tale from a different perspective than that of the conventional detective story. For one thing, he uses shifting points of view. This leads to a confused sense of identification in the reader and thereby reinforces the author's main themes. He inserts the Powell-Barbara D'Courtney love plot to help steer the reader to identify with Powell, yet he includes the possibility of a Reich-Duffy love plot to demonstrate that the world is more yin and yang in its composition than it is black and white. The structure of the novel involves a series of subplots that parallel the main plot, again as a way of using form to parallel content, simultaneously expressing and illustrating Bester's themes. Even the humorous components of the novel serve a similar function.

The most imaginative technical device in The...