Harry Harrison

A few years ago Harry Harrison died. I was lamenting over this fact and I was surprised to learn that most of the people I talked to had never heard of him. That is a shame because Harry Harrison was a fixture of printed science fiction in the 1960’s and 70’s and continued into the 2000’s. By the way, there is one of his works that most people do know about . . .  but I will get to that in a moment.

My college roommate was a fan of Harrison and turned me on to the Stainless Steel Rat series, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  The main character, The Stainless Steel Rat himself, is a scoundrel. He is a master criminal whose name is James Bolivar DiGriz, but is often referred to as Slippery Jim DiGriz. Early in the first novel DiGriz gets caught and winds up being forced to work for the good guys. As I said, DiGriz is a scoundrel, but a likable scoundrel that we have no problem rooting for. He is funny and charming. The first novel was so much fun that he wrote a sequel, and then another, and then another. All total he wrote twelve books in the series. I have often wondered if the person who came up with the idea for the 1960’s TV show “It Takes a Thief” got the idea after reading The Stainless Steel Rat.

The next book of his that I fell in love with was Bill the Galactic Hero. This book is pure comedy, and I laughed throughout the reading of it. Bill the Galactic Hero is a lampooning of some of the Robert Heinlein novels, particularly Starship Troopers. Now, I love Starship Troopers, and I also love Bill the Galactic Hero. Is that a contradiction? I don’t think so. A good story, well told, is a thing of beauty. I think it is okay to love a work of art without necessarily agreeing with all the points that the artist was trying to say.

His satirical or humorous books were great fun, but he also wrote more serious works, some of which ventured into the traditional science fiction themes of the day like the Deathworld trilogy, Skyfall, or the To the Stars series.  His career also included writing nonfiction, ghostwriting, and work on comics.

Probably his most serious work is the one that most people know about, though they may not know it by name. His 1966 novel Make Room, Make Room, was essentially a treatise on overpopulation. The novel is set near the turn of the millennium in 1999 and envisions a New York City with 35 million people in it. In his prologue to the book he states:

  “In 1950 the United States with just 9.5 percent of the world’s population—was consuming 50 percent of the world’s raw materials . . . By the end of the century, should our population continue to increase at the same rate, this country will need more than 100 percent of the planet’s resources to maintain our current living standards . . .”

We are now into the new century and while our planet is certainly still overpopulated and has the problems that ensue therefrom, the worst estimates from the 1960’s did not come to pass, possibly because of Harry Harrison and others like him. Harrison makes us feel what it’s like to live in that horribly overpopulated future. We live it, feel it, smell it with his characters, and it is not something that we want to experience in real life. The novel Make Room, Make Room, was made into the movie Soylent Green staring Charlton Heston. That, you have probably heard of, though Hollywood totally Hollywoodized the story. The plot of the movie veers significantly away from the book.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a film version of The Stainless Steel Rat, except for the fact that Hollywood would probably screw it up. While researching this I discovered from IMDB that there is a 2014 film of Bill the Galactic Hero. Apparently it is a student film. I think I would like to see it. Students might be more likely to get it right. Then again, if they are aspiring to be Hollywood film makers . . .

Anyway, it you like science fiction and are unfamiliar with Harry Harrison, I encourage you to check out his work. Even if you are not a big fan of science fiction, you should at least read The Stainless Steel Rat. You will not be sorry.

(My novel Starliner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or Amazon.com. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).