The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat (1977)

At least it's a fast read.

The back cover blurb makes comparisons to Terry Pratchett's work in fantasy. Which is just ludicrous. Sir Terry is funny, and satirical. Harry Harrison is neither. Perhaps the best comparison is Conan the Barbarian. See stuff, break things get stuff. I think it's supposed to be a farce, but a farce is supposed to be funny.

Slippery Jim in a thief in a utopian human empire 32000 years in the future. Where people still smoke. A relatively peaceful future where crime of all sorts has been socialogically altered out of people. Except for a few atavists like slippery Jim. Who runs around with an arsenal of miniturised weapons, that none of the police or military have. After getting caught by robbing one bank too many (would they really have physical currency or even any currency in 32K AD?) Jim is coopted intot he Special Corps, by the master thief Inkspp himself. Who manages to lose any traces he once had of being such a thief. Jim gets to track down a rogue battleship being stolen by another masterthief - Angelica.

In the later two stories Angelica becomes an annoyingly simpering typical Bond girl, I fail to see how this is farce. Maybe it's a product of the times it was written in. But compare with say LeGuin ti shows a marked lack of foresight. The only area that was well predicted (or lucky) is that Earth in 20000 has suffered huge and irreversable climate warming.

As a change from the Golden Era of SF that was being written at the time this was perhaps a dramatic shift. But it's much closer to being a B movie than an increase in literary quality. It's internally inconcistent, it suffers from poorly imagined future technologies, there's no character development or depth, even for the hero. There are no jokes, just badly written inept 'bad guys'.

On the plus side - it is fast paced, actions rush from one scene to another. The TimeTravel was almost well done, and at least acknowledged the paradoxes created. But that's about it.

Readable only as a contrast to other works of the time - badly dated and not worth it now.

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If you wish to comment on this review, there is a thread to do so, HERE as part of the Review Discussion group. ( )

I enjoyed these books as a kid, but they don't stand up particularly well to adult scrutiny. ( )

I enjoyed these books as a kid, but they don't stand up particularly well to adult scrutiny. ( )

There is nothing complex, or deep, about the Stainless Steel Rat books... But they are a wonderfully fun read. The main character is a lovable rogue, and he makes the rest of the world look unimaginative and dull (deliberately). In a world of ultimate conformity, diGriz stands completely apart.

For me, these books will never grow stale. ( )

I remember reading this book over 20 years ago, when I started it, I was enthralled by the story after the first few pages. Harry's "Rat" series is one of my all time favorite series. I would highly recommend this book, I feel the earlier books are better than the latter of this series. I recently re-read this series and found it just as enjoyable as I did 20 years ago. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun Sci-Fi book/series :) ( )