"The Stars My Destination" anticipated many of the staples of the later cyberpunk movement, for instance the megacorporations as powerful as governments, a dark overall vision of the future and the cybernetic enhancement of the body. Bester added to this mix the concept that human beings could learn to teleport, or "jaunte" from point to point, provided they know the exact locations of their departure and arrival and have physically seen the destination, similar to A. E. van Vogt's Gilbert Gosseyn in the 1948 novel "The World of Null-A". There is one overall absolute limit: no one can jaunte through outer space. (A jaunte of 1,000 miles is the maximum any jaunter is able to achieve, and even that is extremely rare.) On the surface of a planet, the jaunte rules supreme; otherwise, mankind is still restricted to machinery. In this world, telepathy is extremely rare, but does exist. One important character is able to send thoughts but not receive them. There are fewer than half a dozen full telepaths in all the worlds of the solar system.