A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born

Action heroes and antiheroes need origin stories to explain how their characters formed and where they acquired their special skills. By definition, antiheroes have what it takes to be heroes, but we want to know why they refused the promotion and went AWOL. The Stainless Steel Rat Is Born details the rise of Harry Harrison’s most enduring character, James Bolivar diGriz. Raised on Bit O’Heaven, an achingly middle-class planet, Jim is a precocious teen. He decides the quickest way to earn the money he needs to escape a humdrum life is to be a thief. He gets himself jailed to look for a mentor in the criminal arts but discovers jailbirds are losers. So, naturally, he escapes to search for more successful thieves. The Stainless Steel show more Rat stories are readable, and the character is still a cultural meme after more than 60 years. He is, nevertheless, a figure whose roots in the anti-conformist youth culture of the 1950s still show. It is no accident that the image of him on the cover of the 1985 paperback resembles James Dean. show less

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born is a prequel to the Stainless Steel Rat series. Jimmy Bolivar diGriz is a smart and ambitious 17-year-old who feels trapped and inhibited on the backward planet of Bit O' Heaven where his parents are porcuswine farmers. Jim learned early in life that he was clever and unscrupulous enough to take what he wanted from others and, more than anything, he enjoyed planning and carrying out these little escapades. So, while his classmates were drudging through the material that he had already easily mastered, he decided to spend his time learning useful skills like lock-picking and fighting until he was old enough to be sent to the adult penitentiary where, he presumed, he'd show more meet masterminds like himself who could tutor him in more nefarious skills. That's why we meet Jimmy robbing a bank and purposely getting caught on his 17th birthday.

Unfortunately, prison is nothing like what Jim was expecting; it's full of losers. But Jim does pick up one useful scrap of information there: the cleverest criminal in Bit O' Heaven, The Bishop, has never been caught. Jim knows he must escape prison, find The Bishop, and become his apprentice.

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born is a great addition to the Stainless Steel Rat series. It fills in Jim's backstory, gives us the origin of his names for himself ("Slippery Jim diGriz" and "The Stainless Steel Rat") and is just plain entertaining in its own right. It's a great place to start with the series and can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

If you're an audiobook reader, you must try this series on audio. (And if you're not an audiobook reader, this is a good one to start with -- it's only about 7 hours long). Phil Gigante's narrations really add to the humor. In this book he starts off with a rather hickish sounding voice for Jimmy -- different than the voice he used in the other books. At first I was slightly annoyed and thought it was a mistake, until I realized that over the course of the book he gradually and discreetly morphed the voice into the one I was used to (which I like much better). I see now that he was showing the transition from Jimmy diGriz, son of porcuswine farmers, into The Stainless Steel Rat. Nicely done, Mr. Gigante! show less

IF this audio book had been released in the 21st century rather than in '85 it would have been called a prequel. Definitely better than the sequeles to the Stainless Steel Rat, focusing on how Slippery Jim became a a criminal mastermind, rather than how he uses his criminals mastermind to keep criminals in check.

Starts out with robbing stores for candy bars, selling those to other kids, and then getting caught on purpose robbing a bank in hopes of learning from a true master.

Finally finds such a master and they make a humorous journey through procu-swine burgers to a far off planet.

Nothing about this book really stands out. It's just good, wholesome. Why the four stars? It's not easy to write a book that is just harmless fun, apparently. Most books try hard and then fail, or succeed and tax you emotionally, heavy. This book is entertainment without any unpleasant side effects. Think of a sitcom that doesn't try to be clever, sure it's not original and it has been done before, kinda, but it's just good. Good harmless fun.

I'm definitely going to read more of these.

Jimmy diGriz has an a goal in life. He wants to become the best criminal on Bit O` Heaven. He figures the best way to do that is to get some instruction from the master criminals in the planets jail. Once he gets inside, after a bit of a rigged trial (he did the rigging), he finds a bunch of thugs and malcontents. They aren't very smart either. So Jimmy knows that he has to set his sights higher. The guards are slightly brighter but no match for Jimmy and he is soon on his way. But normal crime is boring, there are only so many ways one can rob so many banks. Depressed, Jimmy begins to think that he didn't think this through very well. Then one day he happens across a news report about the best criminal Bit O' Heaven has never seen. The show more Bishop. He was never caught. The only thing the police ever found was a drawing of a chess piece at his many crimes. His spree went on for 10 years before ending abruptly. Jimmy knows either the bishop is dead or he went into retirement, to live off the funds he liberated. Who better to learn from than the best? So Jimmy decides that he will resurrect the Bishop and hopes that a crime done in the old thief's name will draw him out. It does and Jimmy is soon on a adventure that will transform from the small time thief that he is, into the legendary Stainless Steel Rat.

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This is the prequel to the Stainless Steel Rat series. I haven't read any others so I can't comment on them but, this was a pretty good old fashioned sci-fi adventure. By that I mean that there is no sex, not a lot of swearing, and not a lot of over the top violence. The story does move at a pretty good clip and it kept me entertained, enough that I'm thinking of finding the rest of the stainless steel rat adventures. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a decent adventure that's not about someone racing around the universe to stop the big bad baddy that's going to eat the universe or something. I would also recommend this to younger readers, even though it is about a thief he does have his own moral code (that's generally higher than everyone else's) he follows and tends to be more like robin hood then a gangster. M.a.c show less

This was another book I read as a kid and had fond memories of. When I found it at Powell's books for under $4 I just had to pick it up. Harrison seems to focus on "pulp science fiction" -- all of the stuff I have seen from him has been short and easy reading, as is the case with this book. What do you do if you're stuck on a farming planet, smart, and bored out of your brain? Apparently the answer is to turn to a life of crime for entertainment. That's what James DeGriz does, and he is a great anti-hero while he's at it. Great book.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Harry_Harrison/A_Stainless_Steel_Rat_is_born.html

Slippery Jim diGriz, a young, ambitious criminal who deliberately gets arrested to learn from master criminals in prison, eventually trains under the legendary Bishop to become the notorious Stainless Steel Rat, chronicling his early exploits on his home planet and adventures across the galaxy, including being sold into slavery and joining a war on a low-tech world.