IN MEMORY YET GREEN: HARRY HARRISON
Harry Harrison, born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, March 12, 1925, Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A
Died August 15, 2012, age 87, Brighton, England.
Harry Harrison was an American science fiction author, editor and illlustrator.
He was one of my favorite genre authors, whose satirical wit and arch sense of the absurd graced what were already solidly crafted science fiction stories.
I only met Mr Harrison once, briefly, at a convention in Melbourne several decades ago, so don't have any personal anecdotes to share, beyond my admiration for his wonderfully entertaining and vastly amusing body of work.
A stint in the U.S Army Air Service during World War Two happily soured Harrison on all things military. Happily for us, that is, as it later inspired him to create a blackly comic masterpiece that is one of the best anti-war novels in the Science Fiction genre. Back in the civilian world he initially began work in the 1940s as a commercial artist and comic book illustrator for titles like "Weird Fantasy", "Galaxy Science Fiction" and "Weird Science" as well as writing for syndicated newspaper comic strips, including "Rick Random" and "Flash Gordon".
Generally though, fans will be more familiar with his work as both an editor of genre magazines, anthologies and as an author in his own right.
His entertaining 12 volume "Stainless Steel Rat" series (some editions of which he also provided the cover artwork for) is justly famous. It features iconic characters Slippery Jim and Angelina DiGriz, two interstellar adventurer-thieves who, once captured by the powers-that-be, turn their larcenous talents to public service instead of freelance crime. Indeed, the phrase "Stainless Steel Rat" has become something of a touchstone for all sorts of anti-establishment behaviour in the modern world.
The "Deathworld" books similarly involve a multi-skilled main character, one Jason dinAlt, a former professional gambler who ends up befriending a race of indomitably tough survivalists from the environmentally lethal heavy gravity world, Pyrrus.
Harrison's "Eden" series from the 1980s remains one of the jewels in the crown of alternate history fiction, set on an Earth where the dinosaurs survived various mass extinctions, evolved sentience and are the dominant species, though lately they've started to have problems with those pesky, talking apes....
More modern alternate history 'counter-factuals' saw Harrison pit an expanded Viking empire against Christianity in "The Hammer & The Cross" series, and explore an opportunistic invasion of the United States by the British during the American Civil War in "The Stars & Stripes" saga.
He wrote a classic novel about overpopulation, "Make Room! Make Room!" in 1966 that was later adapted into a better than average Science Fiction film, "Soylent Green".
His anthology, "War With The Robots," contains some of the finest and most concisely written stories you're likely to encounter concerning the implications of advanced robotics. The hilarious short story "Arm Of The Law", for example, tells of the sweeping changes made to a small town's corrupt police force when a new robo-cop arrives for field testing. There's also a brilliant story where an interstellar beacon repairman has to resort to the 'God Gambit' in order to gain access to a nuclear powered navigation beacon whose radioactive cooling pond has become the center of worship for an alien lizard priesthood!
Along with a firmly anti-militaristic tone, Harry Harrison's stories frequently featured heroes who were atheists and atheist themes, along with other recurring elements, such as the artificial language, Esperanto. I'm sure that his witty observations of the absurdities inherent in religion reinforced my own natural atheism.
It's a toss up for me, though, to choose which of three particular books he wrote is my favourite, so why not just choose...to collectively marvel at them!
"Bill, The Galactic Hero", is Harrison's "Catch-22", offering an insightful satire upon his own military service and own career as a space opera writer, cleverly filtered through a cunning spoof of Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (a MUCH more worthier send up than the woeful movie ever was) with a couple of good natured digs along the way at Issac Asimov's "Foundation" series. I've read this more than a dozen times over the years since I discovered it and expect to read it a good few more times for the sheer pleasure of it. Beware the further adventures of Bill though, as there are several sadly inferior spin-off sequels done as collaborations.
In a similar 'silly soldiering' vein is the lavishly illustrated (by no less a genre artist than the great Jim Burns) "Planet Story", a crackingly crazed yarn about off-world robotic railroading and the poor squaddie who gets posted to help build it.
1972's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" would surely be automatically deemed 'steampunk' today, It's a ripping yarn of an alternate history novel where North America still remains a British colony and the story revolves around the eponymous ruddy great engineering work of the title. Sly in-jokes about the genre abound, including a cameo by Arthur C. Clarke as a young rocketry boffin. Compare and contrast with Harrison's other sub genre romps. "Queen Victoria's Revenge" and "Montezuma's Revenge" are workmanlike takes on the James Bond spy novel, while "The Q.E 2 Is Missing" cruises into the international thriller category,
There are dozens of other examples of Harry Harrison's notable literary legacy, many of which have the good fortune to carry entirely splendid titles, including: "The Technicolor Time Machine", and "Star Smashers Of The Galaxy Rangers".
As an Editor and Science Fiction commentator Harry Harrison was equally prolific, often collaborating with the formidable Brian Aldiss who wrote fondly of him in his history of Science Fiction, "Billion Year Spree". Harrison and Aldiss co-edited an informative volume of personal histories of Science Fiction writers titled "Hell's Cartographers" in which they both narrated their own eclectic tales. Harry Harrison was a habitual nomad, by the way, living on several different continents during a peripatetic life that informed his writing with many well travelled observations.
The artistic and editorial connections also led to him editing several excellent coffee table books of genre artwork. "Great Balls Of Fire" is a cheerfully naughty collection of much that is lewd, laviscous and lecherous in the field of S.F illustration. "Mechismo" similarly focuses upon Science Fiction hardware, whilst "Spacecraft In Fact And Fiction" is a glorious celebration of iconic space vehicles.
Harry Harrison's consistently humorous take on Science Fiction injected much needed anti-gravity into a genre that at some extremes can be guilty of taking itself weigh too seriously.
He left us laughing.
Here's the audio tribute to Harry Harrison I aired on my radio show, Zero-G:
ondemand.rrr.org.au/grid/20120917133455
IN MEMORY YET GREEN: HARRY HARRISON
Harry Harrison, born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, March 12, 1925, Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A
Died August 15, 2012, age 87, Brighton, England.
Harry Harrison was an American science fiction author, editor and illlustrator.
He was one of my favorite genre authors, whose satirical wit and arch sense of the absurd graced what were already solidly crafted science fiction stories.
I only met Mr Harrison once, briefly, at a convention in Melbourne several decades ago, so don't have any personal anecdotes to share, beyond my admiration for his wonderfully entertaining and vastly amusing body of work.
A stint in the U.S Army Air Service during World War Two happily soured Harrison on all things military. Happily for us, that is, as it later inspired him to create a blackly comic masterpiece that is one of the best anti-war novels in the Science Fiction genre. Back in the civilian world he initially began work in the 1940s as a commercial artist and comic book illustrator for titles like "Weird Fantasy", "Galaxy Science Fiction" and "Weird Science" as well as writing for syndicated newspaper comic strips, including "Rick Random" and "Flash Gordon".
Generally though, fans will be more familiar with his work as both an editor of genre magazines, anthologies and as an author in his own right.
His entertaining 12 volume "Stainless Steel Rat" series (some editions of which he also provided the cover artwork for) is justly famous. It features iconic characters Slippery Jim and Angelina DiGriz, two interstellar adventurer-thieves who, once captured by the powers-that-be, turn their larcenous talents to public service instead of freelance crime. Indeed, the phrase "Stainless Steel Rat" has become something of a touchstone for all sorts of anti-establishment behaviour in the modern world.
The "Deathworld" books similarly involve a multi-skilled main character, one Jason dinAlt, a former professional gambler who ends up befriending a race of indomitably tough survivalists from the environmentally lethal heavy gravity world, Pyrrus.
Harrison's "Eden" series from the 1980s remains one of the jewels in the crown of alternate history fiction, set on an Earth where the dinosaurs survived various mass extinctions, evolved sentience and are the dominant species, though lately they've started to have problems with those pesky, talking apes....
More modern alternate history 'counter-factuals' saw Harrison pit an expanded Viking empire against Christianity in "The Hammer & The Cross" series, and explore an opportunistic invasion of the United States by the British during the American Civil War in "The Stars & Stripes" saga.
He wrote a classic novel about overpopulation, "Make Room! Make Room!" in 1966 that was later adapted into a better than average Science Fiction film, "Soylent Green".
His anthology, "War With The Robots," contains some of the finest and most concisely written stories you're likely to encounter concerning the implications of advanced robotics. The hilarious short story "Arm Of The Law", for example, tells of the sweeping changes made to a small town's corrupt police force when a new robo-cop arrives for field testing. There's also a brilliant story where an interstellar beacon repairman has to resort to the 'God Gambit' in order to gain access to a nuclear powered navigation beacon whose radioactive cooling pond has become the center of worship for an alien lizard priesthood!
Along with a firmly anti-militaristic tone, Harry Harrison's stories frequently featured heroes who were atheists and atheist themes, along with other recurring elements, such as the artificial language, Esperanto. I'm sure that his witty observations of the absurdities inherent in religion reinforced my own natural atheism.
It's a toss up for me, though, to choose which of three particular books he wrote is my favourite, so why not just choose...to collectively marvel at them!
"Bill, The Galactic Hero", is Harrison's "Catch-22", offering an insightful satire upon his own military service and own career as a space opera writer, cleverly filtered through a cunning spoof of Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (a MUCH more worthier send up than the woeful movie ever was) with a couple of good natured digs along the way at Issac Asimov's "Foundation" series. I've read this more than a dozen times over the years since I discovered it and expect to read it a good few more times for the sheer pleasure of it. Beware the further adventures of Bill though, as there are several sadly inferior spin-off sequels done as collaborations.
In a similar 'silly soldiering' vein is the lavishly illustrated (by no less a genre artist than the great Jim Burns) "Planet Story", a crackingly crazed yarn about off-world robotic railroading and the poor squaddie who gets posted to help build it.
1972's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" would surely be automatically deemed 'steampunk' today, It's a ripping yarn of an alternate history novel where North America still remains a British colony and the story revolves around the eponymous ruddy great engineering work of the title. Sly in-jokes about the genre abound, including a cameo by Arthur C. Clarke as a young rocketry boffin. Compare and contrast with Harrison's other sub genre romps. "Queen Victoria's Revenge" and "Montezuma's Revenge" are workmanlike takes on the James Bond spy novel, while "The Q.E 2 Is Missing" cruises into the international thriller category,
There are dozens of other examples of Harry Harrison's notable literary legacy, many of which have the good fortune to carry entirely splendid titles, including: "The Technicolor Time Machine", and "Star Smashers Of The Galaxy Rangers".
As an Editor and Science Fiction commentator Harry Harrison was equally prolific, often collaborating with the formidable Brian Aldiss who wrote fondly of him in his history of Science Fiction, "Billion Year Spree". Harrison and Aldiss co-edited an informative volume of personal histories of Science Fiction writers titled "Hell's Cartographers" in which they both narrated their own eclectic tales. Harry Harrison was a habitual nomad, by the way, living on several different continents during a peripatetic life that informed his writing with many well travelled observations.
The artistic and editorial connections also led to him editing several excellent coffee table books of genre artwork. "Great Balls Of Fire" is a cheerfully naughty collection of much that is lewd, laviscous and lecherous in the field of S.F illustration. "Mechismo" similarly focuses upon Science Fiction hardware, whilst "Spacecraft In Fact And Fiction" is a glorious celebration of iconic space vehicles.
Harry Harrison's consistently humorous take on Science Fiction injected much needed anti-gravity into a genre that at some extremes can be guilty of taking itself weigh too seriously.
He left us laughing.
Here's the audio tribute to Harry Harrison I aired on my radio show, Zero-G:
ondemand.rrr.org.au/grid/20120917133455