The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus

Stainless Steel Rat #10

by Harry Harrison

Slippery Jim DiGriz. The galaxy's greatest thief and con artist: the Stainless Steel Rat. For novel upon novel, Jim DiGriz has outfoxed the forces of conventionality, cutting a stylish swathe through dozens of star systems.

Now, Slippery Jim and his beautiful wife Angelina find themselves becalmed on a painfully boring backwater planet, with nothing to do but practice their skills at computer crime.

Then they meet a billionaire who claims to be 40,000 years old--who offers them millions of credits to investigate a string of unsolved interstellar bank robberies. Robberies which, it turns out, always happen when the circus is nearby. . . .

In a sense, The Stainless Steel Rat has always been a high-wire performer. Now, as he infiltrates the world of the galactic big top, he's taking the role to extremes . . . and drawing the attention of more dangerous ringmasters and strongmen than he ever expected.

Will this be his final show? Has Slippery Jim finally leapt for his last trapeze? Naaah.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Humor, Space Opera, Adventure, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

269 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 13, 1999

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey) was an American science fiction author best known for his character the The Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973). He was also (with Brian W. Aldiss) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

That old black magic…Harrison has got his mojo back with this Stainless Steel Rat adventure! Maybe it's just my pandemic state of mind, but I found this novel had the same charm as the first couple of books. Perhaps because he may have considered this to be the last of the series.

Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is feeling his age. It's getting more difficult to stay in shape, he no longer has the physical stamina of his younger years, and the temptation to spend more time relaxing with his darling Angelina is strong. Unfortunately, he is approached by the self-styled “richest man in the galaxy" who makes him an offer he can't refuse. Greed overcomes good sense and Jim and Angelina are off to a backwater planet to join the circus as a cover for their venture.


Naturally, the criminal life does not run smoothly. The Stainless Steel couple must rely on their twin sons, James and Bolivar, to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. The boys have learned well from dear old mom and dad. The worst thing that can happen to a conman has happened—Jim has been played by another slippery character.

There was a tinge of sadness as I read. There are amusing details that I doubt younger folk will ever understand. Who still remembers Roach Motels? Does anyone comprehend why an explosive called Playtexx made me smile? Despite that, Harrison writes things like burner phones that feel rather modern. An interesting mix of up-to-date and out-of-date.

Slippery Jim Digriz, with his penchant for booze and cigars, is a remarkable character that Harrison obviously enjoyed writing. Coming up with convoluted cons must have been great fun. He ends this book with the words “The End?” and seems unsure about the future. Now we know that there is one more, but that is well into my future if I stick to my reading plans.

Book number 411 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

Cross posted at my blog:

https://wanda-thenextfifty.blogspot.c...

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swindlers and the swindled. It certainly SOUNDS like the circus, but no, Jimmy the Stainless Steel Rat has a much wider range of talents.

Like cheap magic, financial magic, and chicken soup for the face.

What?

Trust me, you'll see for yourself. It's a wild ride. The best way to trap a rat is with a better quality of cheese.

Definitely one of the weirder but perfectly fun novels.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This penultimate episode in the chronicles of Slippery Jim DiGriz is full of all the silliness long-time readers of the series have come to expect but this one has some pretty great SF ideas in it too. I won't go into it too much but I was particularly taken with the concept of living masks. I'm not sure I'll ever look at chicken soup the same way again...

I also really liked how Harrison incorporated Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics into this book, albeit to subvert them (slightly). Big geek love for that one.

So, one more Stainless Steel volume to go... I wonder if it's as bad as I've heard?

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another in the stainless steel rat books. They are all quick reads with alot of humor in them. The stories remain fresh and new. Very recommended, especially to teen readers or someone new to SiFi

[Gareth Howells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fun, great characters, nicely plotted 'romp'.
Always love the Stainless Steel Rat books.

[Hal Astell · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of good reasons to write a sequel, but the one that seems to have triggered this book is not the greatest of them. I have a feeling that Harry Harrison, who was a serious science fiction writer as well as the creator of a number of well-known comedic science fiction series, wanted to wrap up this one and didn't really have anything special to bring to bear for the season finalé. It's enjoyable, as all of these books are, but it's also even more fluff than usual. If even one of the ten 'Stainless Steel Rat' sequels could be called necessary (and one of them is my favourite from the entire series), it certainly isn't this one. It doesn't even end properly, just with a cautious "The End?"

One reason why these sequels become progressively more problematic is that Harrison decided that they would—with the exception of the prequel trilogy halfway through—unfold in chronological order. I realise that sounds weird for a series where Jim goes back and forward in time more than once, but he's older in each succeeding episode, as are Angelina and the kids, James and Bolivar. He was quite a seasoned crook when the series began and he started showing his age before the prequels arrived. By this point, the tenth novel, he's far from the spring chicken he was.

If Harrison wanted to wrap things up properly, it seems to me that he would go out in a blaze of glory and end his final volume dead, but only in the eyes of the universe, because he would have faked that death well and instead gone into luxurious retirement on some pleasure planet somewhere or other. After all, James and Bolivar are chips off the old block and, should Harrison ever regret his decision to wrap up the series, could easily take over as the anti-heroes of the next book.

Sadly, that's not what he did here and, while the boys do show up, they're relegated to a kind of deus ex machina role. If Jim can't do something himself, because the internal consistency of the story won't allow it, then James or Bolivar show up out of nowhere and take care of it for him. It's a literary cheat just as much as the much-used molecular debinder that Jim is so fond of using. Angelina doesn't fare a lot better than the boys, being stolen away yet again and not given the opportunity to turn the tables herself, something that she's clearly capable of doing, as a potential lead in her own spin-off novel. It has to be said that, while the undercurrent of sexism that blighted some of the earlier books is mostly gone, it persists in this sort of thing.

What works well this time is the structure. Jim and Angelina are happily fleecing the stock market on some planet or other through insider dealing, when they're attacked and attacked hard. They fight a good fight, but inevitably lose, only to discover that it was all really a test by a prospective employer, who's very happy with how they acquitted themselves. He's Imperetrix Von Kaiser-Czarski—"You may call me Kaizi"—and he's supposedly the oldest and richest man in the galaxy, a scientist who invented the first longevity drug, which he kept to himself and so reached the ripe old age of forty thousand or so. His wealth slowly but steadily built until he now owns entire star systems.

However, Kaizi reckons that he's being systematically robbed and he's willing to pay Jim four million credits a day plus expenses to figure out who's doing it and stop them. Needless to say, it isn't quite as simple as that and there are a number of points where we learn enough to reevaluate the situation in entirety. That's arguably the best aspect to this novel, because while it's unnecessary, Harrison didn't just treat it as a knock-off to wrap things up. He put as much imagination into this novel, if not more, than a few of the earlier books in the series.

As you might imagine from the title, the search leads Jim and Angelina to the circus. James crunches all the data on what would have seemed in 1999 to be a powerful computer system and discovers that there was one commonality to every crime: the presence of a gentleman by the name of Puissanto, or the "Strongest Man in the Galaxy", though the circuses he worked at changed over time. And, in one month's time, he'll be headlining for Bolshoi's Big Top arrives in Feterrscoria on the planet of Fetorr. It's time for Jim to put his talents as a stage magician to good stead.

As you might imagine from the fact that this is a 'Stainless Steel Rat' novel, a good part of the fun is in the references. Harrison must have been enjoying his Asimov at the time, because he trawls in Isaac's Laws of Robotics not once but twice, albeit to have fun with the idea, and the strongman hails from an obscure planet known as Trantor. He isn't above self-deprecating references either, as the strongman, who Jim sees as "a mindless and sordidly violent weightlifter" naturally reads "mindless and sordidly violent fiction", like 'Star Bashers of the Galaxy Strangers', a clear nod to his own 1973 science fiction comedy novel, 'Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers'.

More fun still are little touches that wouldn't mean anything to an audience contemporary to events in the novel but certainly mean something to us. The ringmaster at Bolshoi's Big Top, for instance, is a Harley Davidson. And Harrison introduces us to "the most concentrated and most powerful explosive known", a substance "completely sealed so it can't be detected". What is it? Playtexx. I can't pretend I didn't get a giggle out of that one.

The flipside of that is that many of the things that pervade each of the 'Stainless Steel Rat' books and this one in particular, aren't likely to be remotely viable in this far future either. Sure, some of that is because Harrison is poking fun at society the time he was writing in, but a lot of it is technological or cultural in nature and that dates the book substantially. For instance, there's a lot of focus in this one on computers and, while Harrison attempted to extrapolate their capacity and power into the future, he failed utterly. Similarly, the very concept of circuses is practically gone, just in a couple of decades, just as surely as the masculine beer and cigar attitude that was an easy target when Harrison wrote a novelette for 'Astounding' in 1957 but were already dated by the time he wrote this in 1999.

It could be argued that Slippery Jim could have been set in his ways, but he's a criminal of unparalleled talent and you don't get to stay one of those for five decades by being set in your ways. In fact, I recall lessons in the very first book where Jim explained that you can't repeat yourself ever. There's no real argument at all when it comes to the advancement of technology and the wider cultural shifts that we have seen since the previous millenium. Harrison simply got those wrong and those prophetical errors make this book seem a lot older than twenty-three years.

But hey, I'm getting overly analytical again. The bottom line is that this one's a fun entry in the series even if it isn't one of the best. It isn't one of the worst either and wrapping up the 'Stainless Steel Rat' saga with this one works OK. It simply could have worked better and that's probably why Harrison was unwilling to leave it that way. He eventually took advantage of that "The End?" loophole and brought out a final final book in the series, 'The Stainless Steel Rat Returns' much later, in 2010, a book that is now—and permanently will be, given that Harrison died in 2012—not merely the final 'Stainless Steel Rat' book but the final Harry Harrison book too.

And, even with so many technological and cultural gaffes, there's one thing that Harrison nailed, that there's always going to be someone railing against the authorities of his day, whether that be the tax authorities or the police or whatever fictional organisation an author can conjure up, and Slippery Jim diGriz is a timeless foil for all of them.

Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in June 2022:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...

Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/

[Galactic Hero · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first 9 Stainless Steel Rats will always sit cherished front and centre on my bookshelf, though it's probably been 25 some odd years since I've read one. It was only when reading Harrison's autobiography Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!: A Memoir that I realized there were two that I hadn't read. This is the first of those. Perhaps my tastes have changed a bit in the intervening years, but I think this book was just a big step down in quality. It wasn't that funny, the planet was bland, especially by Harrison standards, and the characters and villain and heists fairly rote. Whenever Slippery Jim got in trouble, his super family was there to bail him out.

After reading the autobiography (which was fantastic), it also didn't help that I found it difficult to read in anything other than Harrison's own voice. Slippery Jim ate and ate and ate, and drank pretty much constantly, adventured with his super family and rescued his hot wife. The first two, three arguably, feature prominently in Harrison's own life. But on these pages it comes across as transparent wish fulfillment and and much less interesting than the autobiography.

Anyway, one miss out of ten isn't so bad. Rat/Harrison fan forever!

[Thom · Rating 1 out of 5]

The original end to the series sees Slippery Jim diGriz retiring. Mildly entertaining, but filled with cringeworthy sentences starting with phrases like "All I want to know now about computer hardware now is..." Finally, the Rat was mostly on a leash.

That to me is the crime here. Reading how the Stainless Steel Rat pulls off an incredible caper or saves the galaxy is what I sought. Instead, diGriz is framed by a bumbling banker, and forced to commit crimes to prevent the death of his wife. Inexplicable, bizarre, and somewhat boring. At the end, he retires - perhaps to avoid more nonsense like this.

So was it better than the previous book, a 1 star stinker? Slightly. In the previous book, Harrison wrote himself into a technological corner. The swindled Rat doesn't have access to those resources, so this story stands up better. But in the previous book, Jim was more creative. Here, despite pulling off two crimes-of-the-century, he seems much more two dimensional - and that is saying something. The story was, at least, a quick read.

After a 10 year hiatus, Harrison expanded a short story into his final book, and the true final book fo the series. I look forward to reading that soon.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it only because I'm a fan of the series. It's one of the weakest of the books.

[Ian Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrison’s prose does leave a little to be desired in places in this penultimate novel of the series but it cruises along at a steady pace. The bad, first. There’s quite a lot of poorly executed exposition in the early stages of the novel which took me out of the action for a big chunk. Also, the danger level has mysteriously levelled up that it requires the entire di Griz family and their myriad levels of expertise to solve the problem rather than just Jim and/ or Angelina to get things done: I like James and Bolivar but the Rat novels I enjoy most feature Jim working largely on his own or with the aid of his wife. And speaking of the fair Angelina, she does spend a big chunk of this novel in need of rescuing which is most unlike her... although a villain that can apprehend and hold Angelina does instantly become a lot more imposing as a villain. But she is a missing presence here for a large part of the proceedings: as are female characters in general, to be perfectly honest: after the previous couple of novels in which we met several very competent female characters, the absence here feels jarring. The ending does climax nicely but the conclusion does involve a lot of explanations and wrappings-up of plots and storylines which makes it feel a lot more rushed than usual. The only thing I really can’t forgive is that Mr Harrison commits the sin of adding some contemporary computer specs into a story that takes place forty-something thousand years into the future that already feels a little clunky two decades after publication (he did a similar thing in the first novel when Jim adjusts a space liner ticket with a hole punch).
But there is a lot to enjoy here, as well. The Rat maintains his usual entertaining interior monologue as he goes along so that we learn a lot of things when he does and process things with him. The story does trot along at a steady pace with incident piled onto incident which is never boring and always adds to the stakes. He also finds inventive ways of getting out of scrapes that often scupper his normally excellent plans: he is often the first to admit when a scheme has gone belly-up, which is often half the fun of these books.
In all, this is a fun read with a breezy plot which I found very easy to get through in one sitting.

[Surly Gliffs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This confection is the second-to-last Stainless Steel Rat book, bought for $4 at Eat My Words in Nordeast Minneapolis. Slippery Jim is in a happy long-term marriage, has raised two sons to adulthood, and has mostly given up thievery for more sybaritic pursuits. You would think Harrison would be okay phoning this one in, but it's as good as any in the series, with plenty of heists and a little fun stage magic to boot.

There's not so much comic scifi in this mode nowadays. Definitely not for those who have a problem with groaner puns or clumsy satire. Or narrative logic of any kind really (why does the galaxy's oldest and richest man, aided by his single henchman, need Slippery Jim doing jobs for him on a backwater planet?). But otherwise amply pulpy and entertaining! Recommended for anyone who doesn't take their scifi too seriously and especially for Harrison fans.

[Ted Wenskus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really good installment in the Stainless Steel Rat series. It's fairly obvious that Harrison felt that this was going to be his last visit with the Rat, so you can tell he spent the extra time to make it good. Ten years later he changed his mind, but as a penultimate entry, this is pretty classic.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much but I also feel like the villain(s) could have been easily foiled using some of the special core tech from previous books.

[Robyn Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Stainless Steel Rat books💕

[James Livingstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing compared to others I'd read

[Kynan · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL: A fine return to form with a non-gimmicky, noir Stainless Steel Rat story of James, Angelina, James and Bolivar against a particularly clever bad guy!

TL;DR: A definite Stainless Steel Rat story, with not a whole lot of crazy shenanigans! We have the traditional "everything's rosy in wonderland" beginning, followed by the equally traditionally "Angelina got kidnapped" subplot. This one's a little more complex though, and it was quite enjoyable watching Slippery Jim getting taken down a notch or seven at his own game!

The "sci" side of the story seems weirdly wedged back in the early 80s, with references to RAM, ROM and PROM as what working on a computer involves. For something written in 1999 it just seems quite archaic. Which isn't hugely surprising given the references to computer tapes or the weird juxtaposition of having audio-operated robots, mixed in with robots that require an electronic whip to change states (present in this book, and in several other episodes right back to The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge). The other interesting thing that came up in this book, and also one of the previous ones in close publishing-order proximity, is a reference to the "Law of Robotics", which is very much not Asimov's:

Robots must obey the Laws of Robotics. They cannot harm man, lie, steal, commit sexual or immoral acts..."

Oooooh-kay? Not sure where that's coming from really. Is it intended to make us think at a far more specific level than Asimov's more general guidelines? I just mention it because a) it's come up several times in the series and b) because the whole "sexual or immoral" thing seems both hilariously wrong (even without the benefit of hindsight, humans will always use technology - and anything else they can get their hands on - for sexual gratification, and b) "morality" is very, very much a subjective position! This is something that diGriz appears to have a general concept of with his very open-mind with regard to other people's religions, but not so much with anything else? Food for thought perhaps? On a complete tangent: Mr Harrison wrote a short-story called Arm of the Law that "dealt" with robots making moral decisions (or not, as the case may be).

I massicely digress however! This book is an even more concentrated form of the usual Stainless Steel Rat story because we're stuck entirely on one planet (not even any inter-dimensional wormholes to spread the story around a little!) and it's very much like a detective noir thriller with a non-alien, non-time/universe-hopping, non-megalomaniacal plain old vanilla bad guy who's just, well, bad!

This is also the point in the series where it becomes self-aware, and specifically self-aware of just how long it's been running, with diGriz and Angelina deciding that they're "too old for this shit" (I'm paraphrasing) and the ending with "THE END?". Nice work with the question mark leaving the door open for the follow-up that we know appeared in the form of The Stainless Steel Rat Returns.

This one easily hits slots into my top-3 of Stainless Steel Rat books I think. At least top-5!

[Wampuscat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total garbage. Don't read it or your eyes will bleed and want to commit suicide. Well, maybe it's not that bad, but it does help if you drink while reading it. At least it would have if I had, but since I didn't then the statement is pointless. Which brings me back to the book which is also pointless, which was my point.

OK, there, I've channeled the Stainless Steel Rat for this review. It's probably better than the book. Seriously though, the book really does stink. It's just not interesting. The situations are very contrived and feel forced. The plot meanders, and there is absolutely no way that Jim Di Griz has become so incompetent in his old age that he cannot outsmart the bad guy in this book. His kids do all the work in this one, and seem to bail him out repeatedly as if he's turned into Mr. McGoo. The ending is so sudden you almost get whiplash. I've already spent more time reviewing it than it deserves.

Like I said, total junk, don't read it. Wish I hadn't. 1 Star. Crappy Read.

[East Bay J · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was with some trepidation that I approached this, the last in the Stainless Steel Rat series. We go way back, ol’ Slippery Jim and me. Way back, indeed. For sheer fun filled, action packed entertainment, you can’t go wrong with Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat and family. DiGriz always gets himself into trouble and it’s the kind of trouble that could get a man killed. Fortunately, he’s a resourceful son of a b*tch and does a pretty good job of fighting bad guys and saving the universe.

His circus stint is no different. Harrison keeps the action going and throws in plenty of interesting characters, intrigue and humor to give the reader an enjoyable time. Lots of cool gadgets, vile bad guys and drinks. Always plenty of drinks with the Stainless Steel Rat.

So, I’m sad to be leaving GiGriz and family. I will, however, definitely read more Harrison.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Same as in one on previous reviews: fan of the Stainless Steel Rat and Death World series, felt compulsion to find another good book in the SSR series. No luck.

Weak, very weak book: worried and fatigued James DiGriz no longer acts as self sufficient, highly efficient, inventive, resourceful stainless steel rat, rather as helpless "damsel in distress" type, waiting for being helped by family.

Even the style is different: with fairly good storyline, it was made less complex, slow pacing, low tech (mobile phone, computer in the case, gas mask), polluted by "on lookout", cheap shots (with only very few real gems), no longer interesting.

General impression: sad and listless. What a pity.

[Lizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the most disappointing books of the SSR series.
Well, this wasn't as boring as "Stainless Steel Rat for President", but it was damn close.
The plot was weird and inconsistant - it contradicted to a lot of what I knew of Jim and his family. I had so many issues with choices and actions of the main characters, who clearly were just marionettes of weird and in no way logical plot turns and nothing more, and that made this book a chore.
And I'm not gonna spoil anything, but even the title itself was terribly misleading.
R.I.P., Harry Harrison, but this piece was not a good one.

[Doreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still can't for the life of me remember whether I've already read this book or not. I found a business card in it that I think I was using for a bookmark, pretty well along in the pages, and while I remembered parts of the first chapter, there was never any jolt to remind me in later pages of whether I'd read it previously. Ah, well. It was pretty good, if poorly edited, and made for an entertaining escapist read.

[Sue-Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Follows the same style as past stainless steel rat adventures. With a character of very unpredictable actions, the writing style is predictable. But that can be great cause of the feeling like picking up an old friend.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I remember them being when I first read the rest of the books. But it was the last one, and I didn't know it existed until now, so it was nice to finish the series with Slippery Jim's final case.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

you can't go wrong reading about the SSR

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light fare. Quick read. Kind of fun. No substance.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious.

[John Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome first person stories.

[Nai Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

More crazy antics. Good times with Porcuswine!

[James Swenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy conclusion for a character who provided me with a good bit of light entertainment over the years.

[Matt Heavner · Rating 4 out of 5]

the usual Harrison, fun, fast, candy. This one was better than the last few in the Stainless Steel Rat series, I thought.