Metal Mickey [Review: The Stainless Steel Rat]

Slippery Jim Di Griz is a small-time crook with a big-time ego: one of the last few con-artists in a future where almost all crime has been eliminated, he survives by keeping one step ahead and never running the same con twice. He is proud of his achievements and views his chosen lifestyle in romantic terms, but the rat is an apt metaphor: at the start of Harry Harrison’s space opera, Jim’s current enterprise involves stealing food from the back of a warehouse.

Even with a flair for planning original crimes, not everything goes to plan for the Rat. After falling into the hands of an interstellar police force Jim sets off on a trail across the galaxy in search of a beautiful psychopath who eludes or outsmarts him at every turn and of course steals his heart. An interesting sub-plot is Slippery Jim’s aversion to killing: for Jim this is the final taboo. Nevertheless he cannot outhink his lovely prey unless he can get inside her mind: on one occasion using a mind-altering drug to draw out his own murderous tendencies.

The Stainless Steel Rat is a comedy and a satire but not a spoof: it’s comic sci-fi done right. It’s also classic space opera, and there’s always another FTL spaceship to board, steal or commandeer. Later in his writing career, Harrison wrote several novels spoofing the genre, such as Star Smashers Of The Galaxy Rangers in which the heroes discover a hyperdrive powered by cheese. However his disdain for space opera hasn’t apparently stopped Harrison from writing a further ten Stainless Steel Rat novels, the most recent of which was published in 2010. I have some reading ahead of me.

Lifeboat continued

A few chapters in and the book continues in the same, tense vein. Two strands of the book - the religious beliefs of the alien race, and the anti-slavery message, both feel cliched to the reader in 2008, although may have been less so at the time of writing. The appearance of the aliens would also fail to pass muster today - green BEMs that are actually green, monstrous and have bug-eyes... The plot however is handled adeptly, making good use of the closed setting, and the backstory is increasingly fleshed out - the slavery/class regime started as a temporary survival plan for an overpopulated Earth.

I wondered whether Harrison would slip an overpopulation subplot in - it was a regular theme in his solo novels e.g. Make Room Make Room, which led by way of a Charlton Heston film with a classic ending, to a scene in the Simpsons (episode: The Itchy and Scratchy Movie) where Homer, several decades into the future, enters a cinema and, on passing the kiosk, exclaims "Mmmmm, soylent green...."

Small picture was borrowed from somewhere on the Internet. It's a good cover, if I get the chance I'll post a better picture.

Women and children first!

Just started reading "Lifeboat" by Gordon Dickson and Harry Harrison. I may have to review my opinion of the former writer - first chapter engages the reader effectively, introducing a society where a ruling class expects automatic, hypnotic obedience from the underclass; and setting up a claustrophobic life-raft environment following a disaster. I will send updates from this universe - hopefully it will live up to the promise of the first chapter.