The book has received high praise from several science fiction writers. After criticizing unrealistic science fiction, Carl Sagan in 1978 listed "The Stars My Destination" as among stories "that are so tautly constructed, so rich in the accommodating details of an unfamiliar society that they sweep me along before I have even a chance to be critical". By 1987, when the author died, "It was apparent that the 1980s genre owed an enormous debt to Bester—and to this book in particular," Neil Gaiman wrote in the introduction to a 1999 edition of the book. ""The Stars My Destination" is, after all, the perfect cyberpunk novel: it contains such cheerfully protocyber elements as multinational corporate intrigue; a dangerous, mysterious, hyperscientific MacGuffin (PyrE); an amoral hero; a supercool thief-woman ..." James Lovegrove called it "the very best of Bester", and Thomas M. Disch identified it as "one of the great sf novels of the 1950s". "Our field has produced only a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them," wrote Joe Haldeman. who added that he reads the novel "every two or three years and it still evokes a sense of wonder."