On the Trail of The Stainless Steel Rat (Part 2--Analysis)

In my last post, I offered a plot summary of the Stainless Steel Rat canon based on an article I once wrote for a print encyclopedia. Here is my analysis of the saga, revised and expanded from its original version. I hope even devotees of “Slippery Jim” might pick up insights they haven’t encountered before:

"Slippery Jim" diGriz first appeared in two short stories in Astounding Science Fiction (1957 and 1960) that were later developed into the first published novel.

In his introduction to Stainless Steel Visions, Harrison said he was looking to write a story with a strong narrative hook that would capture the interest of an editor of one of the then popular pulp magazines. He said a writer needed to get immediate attention on the first page of a typescript, usually three paragraphs or less. The result was:

'James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge-'
I was waiting for the word charge, I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed. In fact he repeated himself a bit.
'On the charge of illegal entry, theft, forgery-'
He ran on like that for quite a while, it was an impressive list but I had heard it all before.

These paragraphs first appeared in the August 1957 issue of John W. Campbell's Astounding magazine. The 10,000 word novelette "The Stainless Steel Rat" was expanded into the opening chapters of the novel of the same title. That novel also included another novelette, “The Misplaced Battleship,” which was originally published in the April 1960 issue of Astounding, later chapters 4 - 7 in the debut book.

Reportedly, James Bolivar diGriz was created with the intention of making the character salable to Hollywood. (The connections Harrison made led to his 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! becoming the 1973 MGM film Soylent Green.) Harrison brought together the picaresque adventures of eighteenth-century English novelist Tobias Smollett into the interplanetary scope of science fiction with the characteristics of then-popular independent anti-heroes such as Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar ("The Saint") or, very arguably, the James Bond of Ian Fleming's novels. Harrison expanded the settings of these international Robin Hoods from global crises to intergalactic power plays. (In 1964, Harrison ghostwrote Vendetta for the Saint which was adapted into a two-part TV version starring Roger Moore. Harrison also wrote for The Saint comic strips.)

While diGriz moves from planet to planet, most settings are Earth-like worlds with primarily power hungry human adversaries rather than alien creatures, many adventures as much a tongue-in-cheek reworking of terrestrial spy adventures as imaginative visions of an unlikely future. In this largely crimeless future where Esperanto is the unifying language of the galaxy, there are allegedly few professional criminals. diGriz's oddly anti-violent views are juxtaposed against the ruthless tyrants he opposes, becoming a moral, atheistic criminal in an uncaring "stainless steel" galaxy where his independent humanism results from his rebellious attitudes towards a society and legal system he finds beneath him.

He is, in large part, a continuation of earlier French and English eighteenth and nineteenth-century fictional and real-life characters who play both sides of the law. Beyond the tradition popularized in part by Smollett, Harrison took the idea of a swashbuckling anti-hero from Rupert of Hentzau, a villain in Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). Rupert had great charm, was handsome, an excellent swordsman, and well able to live by his wits outside the bounds of polite society. Other predecessors include then famous, colorful robber Eugene Francoise Vidocq (1775-1857), reportedly a model for Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe's August Dupin, novels by Edward Bulwer-Lycron, E.W. Hornung, Ronson du Terrail, and, notably, Honorie de Balzac whose serial character Vaurin claimed he was one of the few men above the law, a sentiment echoed by diGriz in The Stainless Steel Rat.

While the book titles suggest humor, as do the earlier Ben, the Galactic Hero books, diGriz's early escapades are primarily quirky action-adventure stories told with a wry, sardonic tone, largely seen in diGriz's disdainful, outsider attitudes told in the first person. Harrison is nothing like the far more comic Douglas Adams. Some critics claim the series' humor evolved as Harrison adopted popular trends into his stories. It has been claimed the earlier books would have contained more humor had editors of the time allowed Harrison to include more jokes. A few books, such as The Stainless Steel Rat is Drafted and The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues include topical satire and slapstick situational comedy not present in earlier books.

Most stories, however, are an episodic series of captures, near captures, attacks, escapes, and judo and karate fights as diGriz takes on galactic counterparts to Latin American dictators, future Nazis, mad scientists, religious zealots, and societies modeled on Cold War Communist states. Harrison himself considered the series light efforts written between his more serious books such as his trilogies To the Star (1980-81) and West of Eden (194-88), as well as collaborations with his wife Joan, notably the illustrated novel, Planet Story (1979).

The stories are fast-paced entertainment with usually little description or character development beyond diGriz himself and the merciless, overly-possessive Angelina who is both foil to and an equally inventive partner for diGriz. Character touches include Slippery Jim’s affection for porcuswine, a hybrid of wild pigs and porcupines bred to defend the first settlers on the Rat’s home planet, Bit O’ Heaven. Other than in books like Goes to Hell, Harrison's eye for detail is used sparingly, primarily used to describe mechanical gadgets and the obstacles diGriz overcomes, machines that evoke the special weapons made famous by James Bond and his imitators. Many of the devices diGriz uses are extremely clever and inventive, often recognizable as variants of twentieth century technology. In some cases, as in Goes to Hell, Harrison has diGriz improvise surprising weaponry such as 20 pound salamis to distract aliens on a starving planet. My personal favorite appeared in Joins the Circus when Bolivar says a surveillance-detector can be defeated by a surveillance-detector-detector which, of course, can be defeated by a surveillance-detector-detector-detector. Down this road, his father observed, is madness.

The popularity of the series has generated high sales, the Harry Harrison Appreciation Society, an English comic book "Rodent Series" (Eagle comics), and the 1985 You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat, an interactive role playing game in which players are recruited into Special Corps. By summer 2016, many audiobook versions of the Rat novels were available at YouTube.

For much more on the series, check out:
http://www.michaelowencarroll.com/hh/...