Summer freedom often becomes an excuse for mall-drifting, pool-lounging, and half-conscious channel surfing. Tired of losing time? Try reading books. One of the best sources of escapist and enlightening literature is the science fiction (SF) genre.

Before any snickering begins, cast aside those thoughts of crazed scientists howling megalomania, or grotesque aliens seducing adolescents. Good SF is an inventive literature of ideas extrapolated from current scientific and social trends, prompting reade rs to adopt new perspectives on the world around them.

Just in time to cure summer monotony, Vintage Books is reprinting two seminal SF novels: The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination. Both were the work of Alfred Bester (1913-1987), an eclectic writer who only dabbled in SF, but a large Internet poll recently ranked these two works as the third and tenth best SF novels ever written - high praise considering they've been out of print for over a decade.

Bester, a quintessential New Yorker, claimed he wrote "out of fever" and described how he paced through hallways working out a story in his head, building up steam, until ignition sparked and he "ran like hell for the typewriter." His vibrant stories, set in outlandish worlds, are filled with Freudian obsession, snappy lingo, and human passion. He helped inspire the psychological SF New Wave in the '60s (writers like Philip K. Dick and J. G. Ballard) and predated the mind-over-matter themes in today's cyb erpunk stories.

The Demolished Man (1953), winner of the first Hugo Award, has a fascinating premise: Could a man commit a murder in a telepathic society? Ben Reich, a successful businessman driven by nightmares, decides he must try. He coerces help from a few telepaths (or espers) and social outcasts, and the chase is on as esper police search for evidence proving Reich's "motive, method, and opportunity."

As an "open" mystery, Bester reveals the actions on both sides of the law, continually matching each move with a clever countermove. He develops a complex relationship between Reich and the lead detective, an esper with growing admiration for Reich's reso urcefulness, and confounds their goals through layers of imaginative politics and psychological twists and turns.

Bester was a stylistic master, spontaneously garnishing his story with typographical invention: Names are spelled with symbols (Jo 1/4maine and Sam @kins), and telepathic conversations are written as crisscrossing sentences interconnecting in visual absur dity.

Bester's second novel, The Stars My Destination (1956), known as Tiger! Tiger! overseas, was based loosely on The Count of Monte Cristo. In a colorful prologue, Bester states, "This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying . .. but nobody thought so." He recounts the invention of mental teleportation (or "jaunting") and speculates on its social, legal, and economic repercussions.

The story follows Gully Foyle, described in his dossier as "the stereotype Common Man," who vows revenge on a spacecraft that bypasses him while he struggles to live on a derelict spacewreck. Foyle's fury propels him through eccentric asteroid refugees, t orture, prison, low lifes, freaks, vulgar aristocracy and an intergalactic circus.

The novel is one of the most furiously creative, humorous, and enjoyable books ever written. It's an exercise in literary flamboyance, mixing distorted typography and graphics to create a kaleidoscopic voyage through the imagination.

Both novels are acknowledged SF classics that celebrate creativity while guiding readers through extraordinary worlds still familiar enough to remain identifiable. Bester, always compelled to challenge conventions, returned to the genre shortly before his death to produce a few experimental failures, but his two classic novels and a handful of short stories remain timeless works of imaginative fiction - perfect cures for summer boredom.