Harry Harrison

The Stainless Steel Rat — (1961-2010) Publisher: In the vastness of space, the crimes just get bigger and Slippery Jim diGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is the biggest criminal of them all. He can con humans, aliens and any number of robots time after time. Jim is so slippery that all the inter-galactic cops can do is make him one of their own.

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The Stainless Steel Rat (audio)

Listen to the beginning of The Stainless Steel Rat here.

At a certain stage, the realization strikes through that one must either live outside of society’s bonds or die of absolute boredom. There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society. Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity, I chose nothing.

In the future society where Jim DiGriz lives, most criminal and anti-social behavior has been weeded out of the human genome. It’s hard for bad guys to hide themselves in this antiseptic society — in order to survive, you gotta be a stainless steel rat, and Slippery Jim DiGriz is a really sneaky one. He’s exceptionally cunning but he’s not murderous, so when he finally gets caught, instead of fixing him, the intergalactic cops decide to recruit him. Jim’s pretty conflicted about working for the good guys, but soon he’s on his first case after he figures out that somebody evil is building a battleship.

The Stainless Steel Rat is, simply, tons of fun. It’s quick-paced, action-packed, and funny. The villains are purposely overdone in that cheesy James Bond / Batman kind of way, but Harry Harrison doesn’t skimp on Jim DiGriz’s character. The Stainless Steel Rat is one of those outlaws who you just can’t help but root for, especially when he’s always amused with himself and his circumstances. For a science fiction novel written in 1961, The Stainless Steel Rat ages well, too.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version read by Phil Gigante who gives a lively performance. I’m sure that a lot of my chuckling was caused by Mr. Gigante’s interpretation of DiGriz’s personality. In one scene, DiGriz takes a drug that’s supposed to help him understand the mind of a sociopath. This was beautifully and hilariously portrayed by Mr. Gigante. Brilliance Audio will be producing several more Stainless Steel Rat novels read by Phil Gigante. I will definitely be picking those up!  —Kat Hooper

The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge (audio)

Listen to the beginning of The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge here.

Warning: Don’t read this review if you haven’t read the first Stainless Steel Rat novel.

Several nights ago I was in a bad mood. I had asked my husband to pick up M&M’s while he was at the grocery store because my daughter needed them for a school party the next morning. Due to a bad cell phone connection, he came home with the wrong thing and I didn’t discover this until 11 pm, after the closest grocery store was closed. Grumbling and feeling sorry for myself, I got into my car and set out searching for M&Ms.

Fortunately, I had grabbed an audiobook on my way out the door: The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge by Harry Harrison (produced by Brilliance Audio). Within 2 minutes of hitting play, I was smiling and laughing out loud — a complete mood reversal. It’s not just the despicably charming characters of Slippery Jim DiGriz and used-to-be-evil Angelina, but also Phil Gigante’s hilarious delivery.

The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge begins with Slippery Jim robbing a bank and Angelina driving the getaway car. Jim is as clever and ingenious as ever, but now he’s joined by Angelina — the evil villainess from the first novel who’s supposedly been “fixed” and is now working with Jim for the Special Corps, though they’ve both escaped and are attempting to return to lives of crime together. Angelina hasn’t lost any of her skills and ambition — she just has a bit of human decency now. Fortunately for the reader, not enough decency that she isn’t eager to go along on Jim’s crime sprees and help him out of tight spots, even while pregnant. This combination of Angelina’s brilliant criminal activity, deadly fighting skills, and sweet wifely and motherly instincts is absurdly amusing. And we’re never quite sure if she’s really cured of her sociopathic tendencies… Phil Gigante gets her voice just right.

Jim and Angelina end up turning themselves in and Jim gets sent on a dangerous assignment in which he must figure out how the planet Cliaand is conquering other planets. Along the way, he goes undercover as a Cliaand officer (Gigante’s Russian accents are so funny here), meets an army of beautiful women, wears transparent clothes, undergoes psychoanalysis (Gigante’s got a German accent here), and creates a troop of polite robot butlers who, in Gigante’s uppercrust English accent, say things like “Thanking you, Sir” as they throw bombs at the enemy.

The Stainless Steel Rat series, so far, is superb in every way — the plot is exciting and clever, the writing is tight and colorful, and Jim’s voice (it’s written in first-person) is endlessly entertaining. Phil Gigante’s humorous narration makes it doubly funny. This is definitely a series to read on audio!
—Kat Hooper

The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World (audio)

Listen to the beginning of The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World here.

Slippery Jim DiGriz is back. Back in time, that is. The evil villain who calls himself “He” has been using time travel to try to rid the world of the Special Corp (including Jim and Angelina) by eliminating them before they were even born. As his world is quickly fading in front of his eyes, Jim jumps back to a planet called “Dirt” (that’s Earth) in their year 1975 so he can kill He before He can work His evil plan. Before the adventure is over, Jim ends up fighting He-possessed Napoleon Bonaparte who has occupied London (the history is a little different in He’s time warp).

Don’t worry about the mind-boggling impossibilities and plot holes here — just go along for the ride and, if you can, do it in audio. I don’t know how the Stainless Steel Rat books come across in print, but in audio format, with their quick pace (less than 5 hours) and Phil Gigante’s wonderful voices, they’re immensely entertaining. In this installment, Mr. Gigante gets to show off a few more of his brilliant accents. This time it’s British, French, and Gangsta. Even when the plot gets a little slow for a few minutes, Gigante carries it along with his fabulous narration. —Kat Hooper

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You (audio)

I’ve been enjoying Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series, especially the superb audio versions produced by Brilliance Audio. Slippery Jim DiGriz is a con artist who’s been forced to work undercover for the Special Corps, an intergalactic investigating agency. Each of these short novels starts with him (and now his family, too) hiding out from the Special Corps and living it up on other taxpayers’ money. Each time, the Special Corps traps him and sends him off on a fast-paced, dangerous mission that usually involves saving the galaxy in some way.

This time aliens are invading, so Slippery Jim, with the help of his beautiful and deadly wife and their delinquent teenage twins, infiltrates their lair by disguising himself as an alien who wants to join their army. How could he possibly know that his alien costume is so sexy that he’ll have to fight off male suitors while he’s trying to save the galaxy?

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You is another entertaining offering from Harry Harrison and narrator Phil Gigante. It was fun to see Jim and Angelina’s twins grown up and following the family traditions. Unfortunately, this story relies on some of the same plot elements that we’ve seen before — it seems fairly simple to save the world when your enemies are all brainwashed by outdated moral philosophies, you’ve got a time machine on hand, and the laws of physics bend at your will.

Still, if you’re willing to overlook all that, then these stories are definitely entertaining, especially with Phil Gigante reading them. —Kat Hooper

The Stainless Steel Rat for President (audio)

Fascist dictators, watch out — Slippery Jim diGriz is on the planet, and he’ll stop at nothing to secure freedom, peace, and representation for the people. Even if he has to lie, cheat, steal, and stuff ballot boxes to do it.

Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series is lots of fun and you can’t help but love con-man Slippery Jim, his sadistic wife Angelina, and their twin sons James and Bolivar who are, for better or worse, chips off the old blocks. This time, in The Stainless Steel Rat for President, the whole family takes a vacation on a backward planet that’s modeled after a mid-20th-century Central American republic which is democratic in theory but in reality is being enslaved by a totalitarian dictator backed by a vicious military force. Even though they’re completely corrupt themselves, the diGriz family can’t stand to see innocent people suffering because they make their living stealing from corporations — not people (I’m not sure what kind of entities own, run, and otherwise make their livings from the corporations if it’s not people… but, I digress…).

No corrupt martial government is a match for the diGriz family. Armed with their combined good looks and sharp wits, a fast car, lots of cool gadgets, a wardrobe of disguises, and plenty of sleep gas and nose plugs, they set out to bring down the tyrant. And, of course, we know they will — the fun is in how they get it done and the trouble they run into along the way. The Stainless Steel Rat for President relies too heavily on the sleep gas (every time we think Jim’s bound to be caught, out it comes), and the story drags during some car chases, but there are many clever scenes and laugh-out-loud moments.

The best part, as I’ve mentioned before with this series, is the production by Brilliance Audio. These books are read by the riotously funny voice actor Phil Gigante who saves the day by providing constant diversion even when the plot sometimes can’t quite muster it up. —Kat Hooper

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born (audio)

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born is a prequel to the Stainless Steel Rat series. Jimmy Bolivar diGriz is a smart and ambitious 17-year-old who feels trapped and inhibited on the backward planet of Bit O' Heaven where his parents are porcuswine farmers. Jim learned early in life that he was clever and unscrupulous enough to take what he wanted from others and, more than anything, he enjoyed planning and carrying out these little escapades. So, while his classmates were drudging through the material that he had already easily mastered, he decided to spend his time learning useful skills like lock-picking and fighting until he was old enough to be sent to the adult penitentiary where, he presumed, he’d meet masterminds like himself who could tutor him in more nefarious skills. That’s why we meet Jimmy robbing a bank and purposely getting caught on his 17th birthday.

Unfortunately, prison is nothing like what Jim was expecting; it’s full of losers. But Jim does pick up one useful scrap of information there: the cleverest criminal in Bit O' Heaven, The Bishop, has never been caught. Jim knows he must escape prison, find The Bishop, and become his apprentice.

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born is a great addition to the Stainless Steel Rat series. It fills in Jim’s backstory, gives us the origin of his names for himself (“Slippery Jim diGriz” and “The Stainless Steel Rat”) and is just plain entertaining in its own right. It’s a great place to start with the series and can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

If you’re an audiobook reader, you must try this series on audio. (And if you’re not an audiobook reader, this is a good one to start with — it’s only about 7 hours long). Phil Gigante’s narrations really add to the humor. In this book he starts off with a rather hickish sounding voice for Jimmy — different than the voice he used in the other books. At first I was slightly annoyed and thought it was a mistake, until I realized that over the course of the book he gradually and discreetly morphed the voice into the one I was used to (which I like much better). I see now that he was showing the transition from Jimmy diGriz, son of porcuswine farmers, into The Stainless Steel Rat. Nicely done, Mr. Gigante! —Kat Hooper

The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted

This seventh novel in Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series is actually the sequel to the prequel A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born. Young Jim DiGriz is alone, back in prison, and out for revenge. After he escapes and is tracking his nemesis, he gets captured and drafted into the military.

At this point, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted (1987) turns into anti-military propaganda that doesn’t even try to be circumspect. The army are the bad guys — all blood-hungry idiots — and they’re preying on a planet who practices Individual Mutualism, an anti-work-ethic cooperative utopian philosophy that could never stand up to human nature. While the Stainless Steel Rat books are definitely meant to be fun, these types of themes come up often enough that I can’t help but think of them as “agendas,” and this particular anti-military agenda is likely to be perceived as insulting and disrespectful to the brave men and women all over the world who risk their lives to protect their countries.

Unfortunately, even if you manage to overlook the agenda, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted offers little new entertainment for fans who’ve seen most of Jim’s antics before. If you haven’t read any of the Stainless Steel Rat books, you’re likely to be more forgiving than I am, and this book is a fine place to start — it will actually help if you haven’t read most of the previous books.

The redeeming factor for the audiobook version of A Stainless Steel Rat is born is Phil Gigante’s narration — that’s entertaining in itself. I’m not giving up on The Stainless Steel Rat, but I hope the next book will offer more creative entertainment and less ridiculous political philosophy. —Kat Hooper

The Man from P.I.G. — (1968,1974) Publisher: Bron Wurber is a pig farmer with a degree in animal husbandry and a doctorate in galactic politics. His pigs are specially trained and bred, and form a special taskforce, P.I.G. — the Porcine Interstellar Guard. Their task in this humorous tale is to help the people of the planet Towbri, and defeat the monsters of the Ghost Plateau.

To the Stars — (1980-1981) Publisher: In this story of post-Twentieth Century Earth, Man has recovered from the disaster wrought by the Wasters who used up the planet's reserves of fossil fuels and overpopulated the planet. The all-powerful oligarchical governments which guided the people through the bad times have retained their powerful positions. The population of Britain is divided into two classes, the executive class and the proles. Unemployment runs at 90% among the proles, while the upper-class lives comfortably. Jan Kulozik is an engineer from the upper class. Rescued from a boating accident by an Israeli spy-sub, he learns of Israel, the only remaining democratic state, where all men are equal. He begins to question his own role as a 'slave master', and becomes involved with the Israeli underground back in England. Homeworld is a bleak future vision, a post-microchip version of Orwell's 1984, where the all powerful security forces watch every move and plot lives as though they are pawns in a chess game. 'To The Stars' comes from a line in the final, optimistic, speech at the end of the H.G. Wells film The Shape of Things To Come.

The Hammer and the Cross — (1993-1996) Publisher: 865 A.D. Warring kings rule over the British Isles, but the Church rules over the kings, threatening all who oppose them with damnation. Only the dreaded Vikings of Scandinavia do not fear the priests. Shef, the bastard son of a Norse raider and a captive English lady, is torn by divided loyalties and driven by strange visions that seem to come from Odin himself. A smith and warrior, he alone dares to imagine new weapons and tactics with which to carve out a kingdom — and launch an all-out war between... The Hammer and the Cross.

Other Novels:

Make Room! Make Room! — (1966) Publisher: The world is crowded. Far too crowded. Its starving billions live on lentils, soya beans, and — if they’re lucky — the odd starving rat. In a New York City groaning under the burden of 35 million inhabitants, detective Andy Rusch is engaged in a desperate and lonely hunt for a killer everyone has forgotten. For even in a world such as this, a policeman can find himself utterly alone…. Acclaimed on its original publication in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! was adapted into the movie Soylent Green in 1973, starring Charlton Heston along with Edward G. Robinson in his last role.

The Technicolor Time Machine — (1968) Publisher: Barney Hendrickson is a film-producer for ailing Climactic Studios. In a last-ditch attempt to save the company he persuades the boss to finance his new picture, Viking Columbus, the story of how the Vikings arrived in America years before Columbus. The movie will be made on a low budget with no need to build sets and long boats, or pay extras, because they will use Professor Hewitt's prototype time machine to take the crew back in time to the actual time and location when the Viking landing actually occurred. Time Machine spoofs both time travel stories and the business of Hollywood filmmaking. The novel was dramatised for radio by the BBC.

Captive Universe — (1969) Publisher: Chimal lives in an Aztec valley, where the serpent-headed goddess, Coatlicue, walks. When Chimal notices that all creatures entering the valley seem to come from the same place, he goes to investigate. Leaving the valley, he discovers that it is contained in a 'generation starship', which is run by a group who live lives similar to those of medieval monks. Chimal first adjusts to life outside the valley, then sets about liberating the inhabitants of the ship. This is regarded as one of Harrison's most literary novels.

The Daleth Effect — (1970) Also published as In Our Hands, the Stars. Publisher: Top Israeli scientist, Arnie Klein, 'defects' to Denmark in order to protect his discovery, the secret of simple, economic space travel by use of the 'Daleth effect'. He wishes to develop the idea without it falling into the hands of the military, since it also has potential as a weapon. But he is forced to reveal his secret to the world when the Daleth effect unit is fitted to a submarine which is sent into space to rescue two stranded Soviet cosmonauts. Klein and his friends are then subjected to all kinds of international pressure from people wanting the secret. This is a novel about the misuse of scientific discovery, and was listed by Stanley Schmidt as one of the '10 SF Books For Scientists.'

Spaceship Medic — (1970) Publisher: The spaceship Johannes Kepler is travelling the routine 92-day trip between Lunar Station and Mars when it is hit by a meteorite. The Captain and all senior crew members were holding a meeting and were killed by the impact. The only officers left are First Engineer Holtz, who refuses to leave the engine room and Lieutenant Donald Chase, a young doctor in his first post. Chase finds himself in charge of a badly damaged ship, with a crew trained simply to obey orders, and over 100 passengers on the brink of panic. The novel follows his attempts to improvise solutions to problems which arise as they nurse the ship on towards Mars.

A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! — (1972) Also published as Tunnel Through the Deeps. Publisher: Over 4,000 miles in length, intended to sustain a pressure of 1,000 atmospheres while accommodating cargo and passengers traveling in excess of 1,000 miles per hour, the Transatlantic Tunnel is the greatest engineering feat in the history of the British Empire, a project worthy of Her Majesty's Empire in this the eighth decade of the twentieth century. If the project is a success, the credit will belong to Captain Augustus Washington, the most brilliant engineer of our age. It is Washington's greatest hope that his success will at last erase the family shame inspired by that other Washington, George, traitor to his King, who was hanged by Lord Cornwallis more than two centuries ago.

Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died — (1972) With Leon E. Stover. Publisher: A novel which is based around Stover's theory that Stonehenge was built as a political structure, for the meeting of tribal chiefs. Set in 1500BC, it tells the story of the battle between the Mycenaean and Atlantean (or Minoan) empires. The Atlanteans control the tin mines reached by way of the river Danube, forcing the Mycenaeans to travel to Britain to mine the tin needed for their bronze weapons, in Cornwall. When the Cornish mine is raided by Atlantean agents, Ason, son of the Mycenaean king, travels with an Egyptian architect to Britain to get the mine working again. Being too far away from Mycenae to be able to rely on his father's soldiers for protection, Ason must form alliances with Britain's tribal chiefs. The story centres around both the British site of Stonehenge, and the Atlantean palace on the volcanic island of Thera.

Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers — (1974) Publisher: The wild, galaxy-hopping adventures of brash young scientists Jerry Courtenay and Chuck van Chider are at the core of this classic space opera. When the two college students develop a faster-than-light space drive in their homemade workshed, they decide to sneak it aboard their football team's airplane as a prank. The boyish plan backfires, however, and the boys find themselves, along with their crush Sally and the seemingly loveable school caretaker, Old John, hurtling through the solar system towards Titan — an icy moon of Saturn inhabited by hideous ice creatures. Titan and the 20th century are only square one as the foursome becomes embroiled in a vast, intergalactic, century-jumping battle.

The Lifeship — (1976) With Gordon R. Dickson. Also published as Lifeboat. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (ed. Peter Nicholls), Harrison was "filmed at a working lunch with (John W.) Campbell and Gordon R. Dickson which resulted in the Harrison-Dickson collaborative novel Lifeboat. Giles Steel Ashad is a crew member on a galactic liner which is sabotaged by a bomb. The passengers and crew are evacuated and Ashad finds himself in a small 'lifeboat' with a group of human slaves, and two alien crewmen. The aliens are the only ones who can pilot the ship, but they have lost the will to live. Ashad must find solutions to this and any other problems which arise.

Skyfall — (1976) The 2,000 tonne Prometheus is a joint Soviet-American space station designed to harness solar energy, to replace the dwindling supply of fossil fuels. The crew of six live in cramped quarters, but their personal problems soon pale when the satellite's orbit begins to decay. If it hits the Earth, its radioactive power plant will explode with the force of an atom bomb. Skyfall combines political thriller and a disaster story, with space technology based on designs already planned by scientists. Technical advice for the novel was provided by Gerry Webb, F.B.I.S.

The Jupiter Plague — (1982) Publisher: Formerly titled Plague From Space. Publisher: The spaceship Pericles returns from a manned flight to Jupiter. The surviving crew member returns with a hideously disfiguring disease. Doctor Bertolli is first on the scene, and is one of the key figures who must try and protect the human race from an epidemic which threatens it with extinction.

Invasion: Earth — (1982) An alien spacecraft plummets to Earth, passing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and coming to rest in Central Park. Two very different aliens survive, an Oinn and a Blettr, seemingly the bitterest of enemies, one captor, one captive. But when battle fleets from both races converge on Earth, it is discovered that the two races are in league, their plan: to invade Earth. It is left to Colonel Rob Hayward to plan the defence of the planet, with the Russians his allies against this outside threat.

A Rebel in Time — (1983) Publisher: Can history be changed? Can the south still win the War Between the States? Colonel McColloch thinks so... and his gold, his gun, and some very special blueprints stand behind him to help him prove it. Sargeant Harmon is a black man who hopes not... and only his readiness, ingenuity, and wit stand behind him to help him stop it. In the corridors of contemporary Washington and on the fields where Civil War battles have yet to be fought, these two men take each other on — and the winner will determine the course of history....

Author photo credit: Jerry Bauer (1984)