A significant portion of modern Anglo-American literature is missing in action. Some decades ago, critics decided that the process of canon formation was arbitrary and elitist, and that we must pay proper attention to genre fiction—fantasy, romance, detective stories and thrillers, comic books—besides so-called literary works, and to some extent, academic departments reflect that shift. From time to time, genre and pulp authors like Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft are retroactively promoted to the canon, which usually means that their works are reprinted in much pricier new editions. Yet for all this canonical reshuffling, an astonishing number of older works remain unknown outside their particular genre. They are cited neither by modern literary scholars nor—still more damaging—by social and cultural historians, for whom they would provide a goldmine of information about the evolution of ideas. In the case of science fiction, the neglect of older works means that historians radically misdate the emergence of ideas and cultural themes that were quite familiar to a mass popular audience in the mid-20th century, although they only gradually penetrated high culture much later.

It amazes me that a 1953 novel like Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man does not enjoy classic status. This extraordinarily rich work is at least equal to anything by Philip Dick in its deconstruction of consciousness and personal identity, although any modern reader will be taken aback by some elements that seem wildly anachronistic. We seem to be dealing with a pioneering hypertext novel, where radically innovative typography is used to represent telepathic conversations at a cocktail party, an assemblage of floating phrases that uncannily resemble modern electronic chat exchanges. Other contemporary themes abound. Imagine, asks Bester, a society where everyone is telepathic. How could you keep a secret, like planning a murder? The answer, of course, is designing repetitive ...

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