Harry (Max) Harrison | Biography

Harry Max Harrison was born in Stamford, Connecticut, and grew up in New York City. After serving in the army from 1943 to 1946, he began a career as a commercial artist and editor. During the 1950s he was the editor of several magazines at various times, including Science Fiction Adventures,Fantasy Fiction,Impulse, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic. His first story, "Rock Diver," appeared in Worlds Beyond in February 1951, but he did not have work published regularly until the late 1950s. Finding New York increasingly unattractive, he moved his family, by way of Mexico, England, and Europe, to Ireland, where he now resides. His more than thirty books offer action, technological wonders, and various degrees of violence.

Harrison's first novel, Deathworld (1960), begins a trilogy dealing with Jason dinAlt, a gambler, and the natives of the planet Pyrrhus, where the flora and fauna are rendered increasingly deadly by their psychic sensitivity to human animosities. Jason convinces the Pyrrhan leaders, including the beautiful Meta, to end their losing battle and leave the planet. In Deathworld 2 (1964) dinAlt is subjected to arrest by the ethically inflexible Mikah Samon, whose rigid principles endanger their survival on the primitive planet where they crash. Jason is rescued by Meta, who will survive ethically if possible but efficiently when necessary. Deathworld 3 (1968) concerns dinAlt and the Pyrrhans's travels to Felicity, a planet controlled by barbarian hordes whose ruler, Temuchin, conquers the world, winning a costly victory as his former wild, free life vanishes. All three books are science-fiction escape classics; their themes of the futility, the necessity, and the limitations of violence are somewhat muted by sensationalistic treatment.

Harrison's second novel, The Stainless Steel Rat (1961), is the first book of another adventure series. The character James Bolivar diGriz lives for adventure and freedom in a controlled, orderly world until he is trapped and convinced to join the Special Corps to combat "sick criminals" who kill. Slippery Jim's first antagonist is the beautiful but deadly Angelina, who is caught, treated, and converted. The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970) depicts diGriz, now married to Angelina, as a spy sent to defeat a militaristic criminal world; he has to be aided by Angelina, who kills now only in defense of self or family. In The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World (1972), diGriz is sent back into time to defeat He, a megalomaniac out to destroy the future. Again the aid of Angelina is required. The Stainless Steel Rat books, like the Deathworld trilogy, depict strong women. The men, however, are stronger, and if might does not make right, it at least produces survivors; the women live for their strong, smart men, the masters of technology. The books are exciting and can be believed if one wants to.

Altogether too believable is Make Room! Make Room! (1966), later adapted as the film Soylent Green (1973). The protagonist is Andrew Rausch, policeman in the overpopulated New York City of 1999. He experiences the horrors of metropolitan life in the future: a diet of seaweed crackers, insoluble crimes, riots in the streets, food and water shortages, needless disease and death made worse by insufficient hospital space, and the final loss of meaningful human relationships. This is perhaps the most troubling book ever written about population problems. Overpopulation is resolved by drastic methods in Captive Universe (1969). The title refers to a terraformed hollow asteroid starship, the population of which is well controlled by genetic engineering and by intentionally high mortality enforced by religious law. The system, which includes human sacrifice, is broken by Chimal who is able to understand what the others can do only by rote and according to rite. The programming of humans through technology or through religion is evil; the point is made, but not at the expense of violent action.

Harry Harrison is also noted as an editor and anthologist, often in collaboration with Brian W. Aldiss. Their annual Best SF anthology appeared from 1967 to 1975. Harrison's own fiction continues to supply imaginative escape from the restrictions of civilization--restrictions which science, once a liberator, seems ready to further. These themes have been, and no doubt will continue to be, the central concerns of Harrison's work.