Gully Foyle is my name
Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
Humans have developed a skill called “Jaunting”, a mechanism where they teleport from point to point by just thought. It changes society world over, and the nature of transportation. But jaunting has its limitations. The distance is limited to a couple of hundred kilometers, and one must clearly know both where they are, and where they plan to go to.
Deep in space, somewhere between Jupiter and the asteroid belt, the ship “Nomad”, owned by Presteign shipping, is marooned. Most of its crew is dead, there is just one survivor on board, Gulliver “Gully” Foyle. Gully is an uneducated, unskilled grunt, with limited vocabulary, but manages to survive on the rotting hulk of the ship for six months before another ship passes by. But the Vorga, also owned by Presteign, ignores his calls for help and passes him by.
An enraged Foyle, consumed by revenge against Vorga, repairs his ship sufficiently to make it to the asteroid belt. There he is captured and mutilated by the scientific people, a cargo cult which lives on the larger asteroids. They tattoo his face to resemble a tiger. He escapes from them too, and returns to Terra, and attempts to blow up Vorga. He is captured, and asked to divulge the position of the Nomad which, unknown to him, carries a fortune in Platinum and PyrE, a new material which could change the course of history.
Foyle is not swayed by bribes or threats, and is jailed in a Jaunte-proof prison. In a sequence reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo, he bonds with another prisoner, who educates him; he becomes less savage, more articulate and erudite. He escapes from the prison and his actions after that end up changing the course of humanity for all time.
This seminal work is far more than a reinvention of the Count of Monte Cristo in a science fiction setting. The author goes into the very psychae of the main protagonist, and analyses his emotions in detail as he transforms from an amorphous blob intent on revenge, to a being which transcends time, space and humanity itself. His unswerving fixation on revenge saves him from being destroyed on more than one occasion.
The book is very well crafted, and for a science fiction work written over seventy years ago, the story holds up very well. Some of the concepts introduced have been reused in other works by other authors, like the fighting for resources across the system, and life in the asteroid belt. It’s a bold and ambitious story that seems ahead of its time in many ways, and I’m glad that I chose to read this. A definite sci-fi must read.