Harry Harrison - Career

Career

Before becoming an editor and a writer, Harrison started in the science fiction field as an illustrator, notably with EC Comics two science fiction comic book series, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. He used house pen names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines, and published other fiction under the pen names of Felix Boyd, Leslie Charteris, and Hank Dempsey (but see Personal Life below). Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, writing several stories for the "Rick Random" character.

His first short story, "Rock Diver", was published in 1951, in Worlds Beyond, a magazine he had been illustrating for. While in New York, he socialized at the Hydra Club, an organization of New York's science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov, whose work he would parody in Bill, the Galactic Hero and its sequels. In the early 1950s, the Hydra Club included such luminaries as Alfred Bester, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Avram Davidson, Judith Merril, and Theodore Sturgeon.

Harrison has become much better known for his writing, particularly for his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Rat series and his novel Bill, the Galactic Hero — which satirized Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers. Priest wrote:

His most popular and best-known work is contained in fast-moving parodies, homages or even straight reconstructions of traditional space-opera adventures. He wrote several named series of these: notably the Deathworld series (three titles, starting in 1960), the Stainless Steel Rat books (12 titles, from 1961), and the sequence of books about Bill, the Galactic Hero (seven titles, from 1965). These books all present interesting contradictions: while being exactly what they might superficially seem to be, unpretentious action novels with a strong streak of humour, they are also satirical, knowing, subversive, unapologetically anti-military, anti-authority and anti-violence. Harrison wrote such novels in the idiom of the politically conservative hack writer, but in reality he had a liberal conscience and a sharp awareness of the lack of literary values in so much of the SF he was parodying.

Adi Robertson agreed: "His books toed the line between science fiction adventure, humor, and satire, often with a strong anti-military bent informed by his time in the US Army Air Corps."

During the 1950s and 1960s, he was the main writer of the Flash Gordon newspaper strip. One of his Flash Gordon scripts was serialized in Comics Revue magazine. Harrison drew sketches to help the artist be more scientifically accurate, which the artist largely ignored.

Not all of Harrison's writing was comic, though. He wrote many stories on serious themes, of which by far the best known is the novel about overpopulation and consumption of the world's resources Make Room! Make Room! which was used as a basis for the science fiction film Soylent Green (though the film changed the plot and theme).

For a time Harrison was closely associated with Brian Aldiss with the pair collaborating on a series of anthology projects. Harrison and Aldiss did much in the 1970s to raise the standards of criticism in the field. They instituted the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Priest wrote, "In 1965 Harrison and Aldiss published the first issue (of two) of the world's first serious journal of SF criticism, SF Horizons. Together they edited many anthologies of short stories, each one illustrating the major themes of SF, and although not intended as critical apparatus the books were a way of delineating the unique material of the fantastic. As committed internationalists, the two men created World SF, an organisation of professionals intended to encourage and enhance the writing of non-anglophone SF In particular, the two edited nine volumes of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthology series as well as three volumes of the Decade series, collecting science fiction of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s respectively.

In 1990, Harrison was the professional Guest of Honor at ConFiction, the 48th World SF Convention, in The Hague, Netherlands, together with Joe Haldeman and Wolfgang Jeschke.

Harrison was a writer of fairly liberal worldview. Harrison's work often hinges around the contrast between the thinking man and the man of force, although the "Thinking Man" often needs ultimately to employ force himself.

Harrison was selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as the recipient of its Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2009. He became a cult hero in Russia.