Greats of Science Fiction

Harrison, Harry

Harry Harrison. 1925-2012

Harry was born in Stamford Connecticut.  After graduating High School, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945.  This turned out to be one of the formative events of his life and he served in the Air Corps as a technician on analog gunnery computers. Harry hated the Army, he didn’t like taking orders, especially from people he considered to be “Sadistic Sergeants.”  He would probably believe in the phrase: “There’s the right way, the wrong way and the Army way.”

After the being discharged from the Army, Harry briefly enrolled in art school but soon dropped out and began illustrating comic books.  Through the 1950’s he wrote short stories, screen plays and comic books.  In 1957 Astounding magazine published his short story “The Stainless Steel Rat.” and soon afterwards he published his first full length novel which became the “Deathworld” trilogy.

Harry and his family lived in all over the world; he went from the U.S. to Denmark then to Ireland (where artists and authors paid no income taxes!) and finally settled in England. Harry was a humanist, satirist and against violence of all types. He was an Internationalist at heart; he even learned the artificial “universal” language of Esperanto and wrote a Science Fiction novel in that language.

Before there was Dystopian, there was the Anti-Utopian Future genre. One of the best of these is his short novel “Make Room! Make Room!” This story became the basis for the movie “Soylent Green.” This novel is a chilling warning of the dangers posed by overpopulation and pollution. In the original story, Soylent Green really was just made of lentils and sea weed; not people. Harry was not happy with this “Hollywood” change to his script.

In time, the original short story “The Stainless Steel Rat” became a series of 12 novels written over the course of 40 years and chart the adventures of “Slippery Jim DeGriz.” He is an interstellar criminal who is recruited by the Special Corps to help catch the really bad guys (killers, terrorists, time travelling aliens agents, etc.) The best thing about this series is the irreverent humor and the Rat’s disrespect for authority.

In 1964 Harry wrote a parody of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” called: “Bill the Galactic Hero.”  This is a written satire and protest at what he considered the glorification of violence in some science fiction stories. 

The highly imaginative “West of Eden” series is an alternate history based on that asteroid not taking out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Humans still evolved, but found themselves in a world dominated by an ancient and highly intelligent Reptile civilization. The science is well researched and greatly adds to the story.

The “Hammer and the Cross” series is an intriguing alternative history of the Viking invasion of England. It combines Norse and Christian Grail mythology in a well written speculation of “what-if.”

Captive Universe is the story of an Aztec culture living in a generational star ship with no knowledge that they are in a hollowed out asteroid travelling to another star system.

Harrison was nominated twice for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and was awarded the Nebula for “Soylent Green” (with Stanley R. Greenberg). He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004 and named the 26th SFWA Grand Maser in 2008 and the Damon Knight Grand Master in 2009.

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Written by WillFlyForFood