For decades, Harry Harrison was at the forefront of sci-fi and fantasy. He spent decades writing novels and short stories, as well as illustrating comics like Weird Science. For much of the ‘50s and ’60s, he was the main writer on the legendary Flash Gordon newspaper strip.
In 2004, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His friend Michael Carroll said of his work, "Imagine Pirates of the Caribbean or Raiders of the Lost Ark, and picture them as science-fiction novels." Full of action, jokes, heart, and sly political wit, his stories continue to be read and cherished.
If you're looking for some vintage sci-fi, then you can't go wrong with the many works of Harry Harrison. Here are eight of his must-read books!
Bill, the Galactic Hero
The legendary Terry Pratchett once declared that this was the funniest sci-fi novel ever written. Bill is a naive farmboy on a small, backward agricultural planet who finds himself drugged and hypnotized into joining the Space Troopers. Now, he's stuck in boot camp, trying not to draw the attention of the nightmarish instructor, Deathwish Drang.
Bill just wants to go back to his quiet life of fertilizers and crops, and maybe find a nice girl to settle down with, but now he's part of the war against the reptilian Chingers. He keeps finding himself falling headfirst into propaganda, corruption, and guns. Lots of guns.
Skyfall
Prometheus was the largest spacecraft ever built, a behemoth of technological achievement and U.S.-Soviet cooperation, weighing 20,000 tons. It was designed to end the Earth's energy shortage once and for all by transporting a huge solar energy converter into orbit above the planet.
But Prometheus is so big that re-entry is a delicate procedure. If the smallest thing goes wrong, it could smash onto the Earth's surface with the force of an atomic bomb. The mission now is to save Skyfall and its astronauts from doom.
Make Room! Make Room!
Do you know the secret of Soylent Green? You probably know one of the most legendary twists in sci-fi history, but you may not know that the 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston was based on a book by Harry Harrison (though that bit was not in his version).
Set in an alternate 1999, the dangerously overpopulated city of New York is struggling with power shortages, water rationings, and mass unemployment. Police Detective Andy Rusch lives in a cramped apartment with Sol, a retired engineer who is desperate for humanity to change its ways.
The teenager Billy Chung delivers rare luxuries to the fortified apartments where the uber-rich live. Shiri, the beleaguered mistress of notorious racketeer Big Mike, craves a true human connection. How much longer can New York survive like this as its population keeps rising to new, unmanageable heights?
Planet of the Damned
On the planet Anvhar, the population has grown used to its erratic weather. Their curious orbit means they experience a year with a long, very cold winter, followed by a brief but scorching summer. To stay busy during the winter, Anvhar has concocted a series of planet-wide games called the Twenties.
Brion Brannd, the most recent winner of the games, finds himself recruited by Ihjel, a previous winner of the Twenties, to join a mission on the desert planet of Dis. The threat of civil war is growing between the planets that Anvhar neighbors, and if Brion can't help to stop a potential nuclear strike, the entire galaxy could be obliterated.
The Stainless Steel Rat
James Bolivar diGriz is a con man, thief, and troublemaker with many aliases who has earned the nickname “the Stainless Steel Rat.”
His latest bank job has ended poorly, and now he's been conned into working for the Special Corps, the elite law-enforcement and spy agency led by the former greatest crook in the Galaxy, Harold Peters Inskipp.
Jim would rather not get his hands dirty, especially on someone else's behalf, but being among the Corps means being alongside Angelina, a criminal genius with a dark side who has none of Jim's moral hang-ups.
West of Eden
In a parallel universe, Earth was not struck by an asteroid 65 million years ago, and the dinosaurs never went extinct.
Instead, evolution allowed for an intelligent species of reptiles called the Yilanè to dominate the planet, while a human-like species called the Tanu took over the one continent untouched by dinosaurs, North America.
Kerrick is a Tanu who was raised among the Yilanè but wishes to live among his own people. Vaintè, an ambitious Yilanè, rejects this notion and prepares to declare war between their kind.
The Technicolor Time Machine
Barney Hendrickson is a hack movie director who works for a studio about to go out of business. Desperate to save his livelihood, he comes up with a madcap scheme straight out of one of his scripts: he drags his boss, studio owner L.M. Greenspan, to meet the mad scientist Professor Hewitt, who claims to have invented a time machine.
He wants to make the most historically accurate movie ever by shooting in the past, a Viking movie unlike anything ever seen before on the big screen. But desperate filmmakers and diva actors are not prepared for the reality of meddling with a bloody past.
A Rebel In Time
Wesley McCulloch is a racist colonel who is on the run after being investigated for murder and possible corruption. Troy Harmon, the man hired to find him, makes a shocking discovery: McCulloch has found a time machine and is using it to try to change the outcome of the American Civil War.
Using a stolen World War II submachine gun, he wants to empower the Confederacy to victory and ensure that slavery is never abolished. Harmon, a Black man, must go back to the 1800s and stop McCulloch before the future is forever changed.
Featured image: John Copthorne
