HARRY HARRISON - Sci-Fi Writer & Creator of the Stainless Steel Rat

HARRY HARRISON - Sci-Fi Writer & Creator of the Stainless Steel Rat

Science fiction writer Harry Harrison who was best known his series featuring the characters the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, the Galactic Hero, and penning the novel "Make Room, Make Room", which was later filmed as "Soylent Green", died at his home in Brighton, England, on August 15, 2012.  He was 87. He was born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Stamford, Connecticut, on March 12, 1925.  He served in the U.S. Army Air Force as a gunnery instructor during World War II.  He subsequently worked as an illustrator for comics and pulp magazines, and scripted the "Flash Gordon" comic strip.  He created his best known character, James Bolivar 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz, in a 1957 short story for "Astounding" magazine, that was revised and expanded for the 1961 novel "The Stainless Steel Rat".  Harrison's intergalactic con-man headlined numerous novels, short-stories, and comic books over the next five decades, culminating in 2010's "The Stainless Steel Rat Returns".  He frequently shared his advocation in the international laguage Esperanto in these and other stories.

He wrote the 1966 novel "Make Room! Make Room!", about a dystopian future where there were too many people and too little food, though he reportedly abhorred addition of cannibalism to Richard Fleischer's 1973 film version, "Soylent Green", starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in his final role.  Harrison also wrote the "Deathworld" series, and created "Bill, the Galactic Hero", in a satirical anti-war novel in 1965.  He returned to the character in the 1989 novel "Bill, the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Robot Slaves", and a handful of subsequent stories were penned by others under Harrison's auspice.  His other novels include "The Techicolor Time Machine" (1967), "Captive Universe" (1969), "Spaceship Medic" (1970), the "To the Stars" trilogy including "Homeworld" (1980), "Wheelworld" (1981), and "Starworld" (1981), "A Rebel in Time" (1983), the "Eden" trilogy including "West of Eden" (1984), "Winter in Eden" (1986), and "Return to Eden" (1988), and the "Hammer and the Cross" series with John Holm (Tom Shippey).  His "Deathworld" series had a resurgence in Russia in the 2000s, with a handful of novel co-authored with Ant Akalandis and Mikhail Ahmanov.