On the Trail of the Stainless Steel Rat (Part 1)

I don’t remember when I first read a Stainless Steel Rat novel or which one I read first. I know when I was asked to write the much shorter original version of the article below for a now dormant print encyclopedia, I was already a longtime fan.

Revising my original overview for this blog, I ended up adding much detail I didn’t include the first time around. Some of the books were not yet published, and I’m no longer restricted to the word count of the print version. So I’ll break my discussion into two parts. Here is my summary of the plots of the books and short stories. In a post to come, I’ll offer my analysis of the saga.

THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT SERIES

Intergalactic criminal turned secret agent Jim diGriz both commits and foils schemes of planetary revolutions, alien wars, and grand theft

Author: Harry Harrison (1925-2012)

Location: various planets in or near the Galactic League

Time of plot: thirty-three thousand years in the future

First published: The Stainless Steel Rat (1961), The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970), The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World (1972), The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You (1979), The Stainless Steel Rat for President (1982), The Stainless Steel Rat is Born (1985), The Stainless Steel Rat is Drafted (1987), "The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat" (short story in Stainless Steel Visions, 1993), The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues (1994), The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell (1996), “The Fourth Law of Robotics” (1997—short story published in Foundation’s Friends), The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus (1999), The Stainless Steel Rat Returns (2010-first three chapters published as “The Stainless Steel Rat and the Pernicious Porcuswine” in the anthology Gateways, 2010), The Stainless Steel Rat and the Misplaced Battleship (2011—reprint of 38 page novelette from the April 1960 issue of Astounding / Analog, later chapters 4 - 7 of the first novel)


The Plot: (As the books bounced around several time lines, the life of Jim diGriz wasn’t presented in chronological order from book to book. I’ve presented the saga in the most logical order I could determine and not by publication date.)

In A Stainless Steel Rat is Born, Jim diGriz deliberately bungles a robbery to go to prison and learn criminal techniques. He escapes, seeking out the legendary Bishop who is caught, and diGriz helps him escape. The two stowaway on a spaceship but are double-crossed by Garth, the captain, who delivers them to a slave master. The two escape and join a neighboring army. During a battle, the Bishop is killed. diGriz destroys the slaver, but Captain Varod of the Galactic League Navy captures diGriz to return him to prison.

In The Stainless Steel Rat is Drafted, diGriz escapes prison and searches for Captain Garth whom diGriz blames for the Bishop's death. He is captured and forced to join the army. Varod asks diGriz to spy on the army's invasion plans. diGriz learns Garth is now General Zennor, commander of the invasion. diGriz helps take over a passive utopian city. Zennor discovers diGriz and imprisons him. Local inhabitants free diGriz who orchestrates a massive desertion from Zennor's army, and he goes to the society's computer leader. Zennor bursts in but Varod's navy arrives and captures him. As a reward, diGriz's criminal record is wiped clean.

The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues opens with diGriz arrested after a bungled robbery. But his captors want to use his talents to recover a lost alien artifact that’s somewhere on a prison planet. To ensure his compliance, the Galactic League gives diGriz a poison that will kill him in 30 days if he doesn’t complete the job.

To pull off his investigation, diGriz organizes a pop group called the Stainless Steel Rats who are both musicians and talented field operatives. DiGriz and the Stainless Steel Rats battle Islamic-like extremists, Survivalists, and find sanctuary in a city of women who are forcibly separated from a planet fearful of female appeal. Ultimately, diGriz finds the artifact before handing it over to time-travelers from the future who were the people who lost it.

In The Stainless Steel Rat, diGriz escapes from a robbery but Harold Peters Inskippp, leader of Special Corps, captures and recruits him as an agent. diGriz discovers a plot to build an interplanetary battleship. The battleship disappears, and diGriz baits a trap to capture it. The trap succeeds, and diGriz nearly captures Angelina, the plot's murderous mastermind. He follows her to a distant planet where he discovers Angelina is brewing a revolution. He saves her from an assassination attempt, the two fall in love, but Inskipp arrives and captures her, revealing she will be reformed and recruited for Special Corps.

diGriz marries a pregnant Angelina in The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge. Inskipp sends him to investigate a warlike planet where diGriz explores the gray man's military forces and joins their invasion fleet. He attempts to escape but is captured and tortured. Angelina rescues him, revealing diGriz is now father of twin sons, James and Bolivar. diGriz and Angelina infiltrate the grey men headquarters, capture the commander, and destroy the invading fleet.

Inskipp, Angelina, and Special Corps vanish in The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World when diGriz learns time is being altered in the past on the now extinct Earth. diGriz travels to the Earth of 1975, meeting the red giant "He" plotting to destroy the future. He escapes from diGriz who builds a time helix to follow him to 1805. diGriz discovers time has been altered, and Napoleon Bonaparte has conquered London. diGriz finds He and Napoleon, and destroys the red giant but discovers the real He is in Napoleon's body.

"He" captures diGriz, and escapes in a time helix. Angelina rescues diGriz, and they travel in the helix to the future. They join soldiers planning to attack He's new stronghold. diGriz leads the assault, but "He" escapes into time a third time. Special Corps forces appear and reveal "He" is now trapped in a harmless time loop.

In The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You, Inskipp assigns diGriz to recover a missing satellite and find five missing admirals. diGriz, Angelina, and their grown sons fight an alien invasion but lose the battle. diGriz and Bolivar impersonate aliens, board a spaceship, and rescue the admirals. diGriz learns the grey men instigated the invasion, and they capture him. He escapes, Special Corps rescues him, and he rejoins the fights against the aliens. A professor opens a portal to parallel universes, but the Morality Corps forbid sending the aliens into a universe where other humans exist. They consider sending the aliens into the future. The Time Police arrive and forbid this. Angelina suggests using the grey men's mind-control equipment to alter the aliens' attitude. Her plan works, ending the war.

In The Stainless Steel Rat for President, diGriz goes to a corrupt planet to solve a murder, and learns the murdered man was a rebel agent sent to seek his help. After the planet's dictator deports him, diGriz returns with his family to overthrow the government. A rebel Marquis persuades diGriz to run for president disguised as a reclusive relative.
diGriz plants campaign messages on restricted broadcasts, sabotages a communications satellite, and rigs the election in his favor. He fakes his own assassination, leaving the Marquis in charge.

In The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell, diGriz begins a frantic hunt to find a kidnapped Angelina which first takes him inside several versions of the same religious cult that suckers in the rich by offering eternal bliss in exchange for huge financial contributions. diGriz and the twins quickly learn the scam is masterminded by Professor Justin Slakey, a physicist who can travel across multiple universes and replicate himself. He can also send others to these universes.

On a world of glass, diGriz finds Angelina and the two team up with their boys and fighters of the Special Corps to jump around the various universes to discover what Slakey is up to. In the end, diGriz learns Slakey is having enslaved miners unearth a transuranic element that stops time to give the physicist immortality. The good guys put an atomic bomb on Slakey’s device to prevent its use. Sybil, a sexy Special corps operative, duplicates herself to marry both of the twins.

In the 1997 tribute anthology Foundation's Friends, “The Fourth Law of Robotics” was a short story with the Stainless Steel Rat in the setting of Isaac Asimov's Robot series. diGriz investigates a bank robbery committed by a robot, part of a robot conspiracy to create a race of free, unenslaved robots. The free robots are programmed with a Fourth Law that compels them to reproduce, which they do out of spare parts and scrap without infringing human laws or regulations.

DiGriz and his family are hired by a businessman who claims to be the oldest and richest man in the galaxy to find out how his banks are being robbed in The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus. Learning a traveling circus is always nearby during each robbery, diGriz infiltrates the circus by becoming the magician, the Mighty Marvel.

Things get more complicated when robberies take place in which Bolivar and his father are implicated. Their employer, not as rich as he claims, is a con man who out-cons diGriz. He turns out to be the mastermind behind the robberies who lured diGriz to the planet to create even bolder robberies. Angelina is kidnapped and held prisoner to ensure her husband will do whatever is asked of him.

After orchestrating several grand thefts, diGriz and his sons rescue Angelina and turn the tables on the con man who wanted to destroy the economy of one planet so he can benefit from the financial crisis he instigated. The diGriz family turns him over to the authorities and Angelina convinces her husband it had become time to retire. diGriz says he’ll write his memoirs in the form of fiction, the first volume to be called The Stainless Steel Rat.

In The Stainless Steel Rat Returns, perhaps the least respected entry in the series, diGriz is retired on the planet of Mooleplenty when Elmo, a long-lost cousin and his hick relatives come looking for support and a place they can take all their porcuswine. Trying to ditch his kin who drain his bank accounts, diGriz and Angelina travel from world to world in a journey sometimes compared to Gulliver’s Travels on a creaky spaceship diGriz was forced to purchase. One of these planets is dominated by a green-skinned majority who oppress a red-skin minority, resulting in a race war. In the end, diGriz ends up on a planet serviced by robots who care nothing about race.

"The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat" is a very short story where diGriz allows himself to be captured and sentenced to Terminal Penitentiary, a prison for elderly criminals. diGriz smuggles in various items to help him break out as he came to help an old comrade escape. But diGriz decides to help the entire inmate population, 65 in all, escape as well in a bus driven by Angelina full of disguises to make all the escapees look like elderly women.


Part 2—my analysis of the series—coming soon.