As early as 1960, author and critic Kingsley Amis noted that, “[SF] clubs are inclined to be progressive, especially on racial questions, and thus reflect a feature of the medium itself: many stories allogorise the theme of discrimination, some treat it directly.”1 Harry Harrison has written a number of stories which use both methods mentioned here. For example, Mute Milton which was first published in the February 1966 edition of Amazing Stories. It was reprinted in The Best of Harry Harrison (1976) with an introduction by the author in which he states:
I bought a copy of Time which had a piece about [Martin
Luthor] King which contained, among other things, a quote from some
simple-minded Southern son-of-a-bitch of a sheriff. Who said something to the
effect that maybe King was a big man in Norway but in the Sheriff’s town he
would be just one more nigger…In the Army I was stationed for a number of years
in Mississippi, Florida and Texas. I knew the sheriff’s type well. I had just
forgotten.2
Harrison elaborates further: “I got so offended by
him. He [King] just got a Pulitzer prize and this moron, I put that moron in
the story. I wrote that story just out of sheer anger and … that this could
exist you know.”3 Harrison’s
response was to write Mute Milton, an angry condemnation of the Southern
racism with which Harrison was all to familiar. In Parallel Worlds, the
author recalls a conversation with John
Campbell:
I recall one day in [Campbell’s] office, G. Harry Stine was there…some moron in South Virginia had produced research that the negro mentality was less than the white mentality…smaller brain-case and whatever. And they had a curve--a bell-shaped curve of intelligence…with the whities up here and the darkies down there or something…and I said: `No, no.’ They said: `But it’s proved in West Virginia’ and I said you could prove anything in West Virginia, there’s no problem with that!4
Mute
Milton is the story of Sam Morrison, a 67 year old mathematics teacher at
Carteret College, Mississippi. The black teacher stops at Springville for an
hour to wait for a change of buses. It is here he comes across Sheriff-elect
Brinkley, a pot-bellied cop who is also a grand knight of the Klu Klux Klan.
After enduring racist remarks from Brinkley, and noticing the absence of black
faces on the street and in the bus station, Morrison retires to a bar for
safety. He meets Charles Wright, a young “freedom rider” from NYU who is in the
South to work on the voter’s committee. Wright tells Morrison that he was
threatened by Brinkley and is returning home to the North. Harrison now adds an
SF element to the story: Morrison shows Wright a radio, built by a nephew
working on Morrison’s plans, which operates without a battery. Wright is
astonished to realise that the radio runs off gravity, and he begins to think
of the vast potential of Morrison’s discovery. However, before they can discuss
it further, Brinkley enters the bar. Wright makes his escape, however, Morrison
is killed by a carelessly aimed shot from Brinkley. When another cop comments
“There’s gonna be trouble about this,” Brinkley states, “Why trouble?”…”It’s
just anutha ol’ dead nigger.”5 Brinkley crushes the radio with his
foot as he leaves the scene.
In
this short story, the exchanges of dialogue between the two black characters
reflect the two main philosophies of
blacks in dealing with the problem of living alongside white America. In the
late 19th and early 20th Century, Booker T. Washington
was a leading black voice. Historian Robert Weisbrot describes Washington as, “A
leading black advocate of self-help who believed in walking softly and carrying
away big donations from Northern philanthropists for education and job
training. This approach required a careful balance between accommodation of
white corporate leaders and delivery of tangible services to urban blacks.”6
Washington’s book Up From Slavery (1901) taught blacks that, in
social matters, they could be “separate
but equal”, a reflection of the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson.
Washington believed in the value of hard work and that blacks would have to
achieve economic equality before they could gain social equality. Increasingly
influential, however, was Harvard trained W.E.B. DuBois. He resented
Washington’s “accommodation” and, through
organisations such as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), DuBois
advocated social equality and enfranchisement of blacks.
In
the 1950s, when Civil Rights again became a major issue in American society,
the black response encompassed the two differing approaches of DuBois and
Washington but also included a Marcus Garvey type “back to Africa” approach.
For example, Dr. Martin Luthor King marched for Civil Rights but advocated a
policy of non-violent protest. He believed that if blacks could have the same
opportunity as whites to partake of the American Dream, then the U.S.A. was the
best chance for black advancement. However, the Nation of Islam wanted separate
institutions for blacks and groups such as the Black Panthers were prepared to
use violence to advance their cause.
It
is against this background that Sam Morrison and Charles Wright play out their
roles in the story. Booker T.Washington has been accused of, “playing the
public role of `Uncle Tom.’7 Similarly, when Morrison gently
chastises Wright for criticising Brinkley, Wright states, “That’s what Uncle
Tom said – and as I remember he was still a slave when he died. Someone has got
to speak up; you can’t remain quiet forever.”8 When Morrison reminds
Wright that the North has its problems too, Wright states
I wouldn’t even call them problems after what I’ve seen down here. It’s no paradise in New York – but you stand a chance of living a bit longer…Maybe we’re second class citizens in the north – but at least we’re citizens of some kind and can get some measure of happiness and fulfillment. Down here a man is a beast of burden, and that’s all he is ever going to be – if he has the wrong colour skin.9
The comparison between
Washington and Morrison is strong. For example, Washington was a slave who
worked hard to get an education at Hampton Institute. As principal of Tuskegee
Institute, Alabama, he helped build it into an important college for black
education. Morrison states, “My father was a field man, a son of a slave – and
I’m a college teacher. That’s progress of a sort.”10 In reply,
however, Wright states:
What sort? So one hundredth of one
percent of the Negroes get a little education and pass it on at some backwater
college. Look, I’m not running you down; I know you do your best. But for every
man like you there must be a thousand who are born and live and die in filthy
poverty, year after year, without hope. Millions of people. Is that progress?
And even yourself – are you sure you wouldn’t be doing better if you were
teaching in a decent university?11
In these exchanges, Morrison plays the same role as Shirl to Wright’s Sol in Make Room! Make Room! He doesn’t really offer much of an argument to Wright. His dialogue is a few lines long whereas Wright is given a paragraph to reply to his questions and expatiate on previous answers. However, Morrison is not just a cardboard, disposable, character. Harrison has given him an interesting and believable background and his exchanges with Wright show a weary reluctance to make trouble borne out of the pragmatism of living in the South.
Harrison’s biographer, Leon Stover, has criticised Mute Milton
stating, “The story falls below critical standards for urbane art. Pain is
inflicted and endured, with the existential tragedy of primitive drama.”12
However, because of the political and social issues Harrison has raised, his
short stories tend to work best when there is an element of conflict to
emphasise his points. Stover also doubts that Harrison can give an authentic
view of black life. He states, “Like many Jewish intellectuals of the time,
[Harrison] has presumed to speak for aspiring blacks as if they, too, were an
oppressed minority bursting with intellectual talent and disposed to enter the
professions once the formal barriers of prejudice and discrimination were
lifted.”13 So blacks were not an oppressed minority? Stover’s
argument is undermined by the simple fact that blacks have, indeed, prospered
through civil rights legislation. Stover’s criticism is comparable with the
criticism, bordering on abuse, suffered by William Styron on publication of his
novel The Confessions of Nat Turner (1966). When asked about the
comparison, however, Harrison stated that he had, “No problem at all” writing
about a black character.14 Perhaps the reason for his confidence
comes from his upbringing as Harrison grew up in South Jamaica, the
predominantly black area of Queens, New York. He went to the mixed race Forest
Hills High School, and served with black soldiers in the US Army. He states:
When I was in it was a segregated Army. Blacks were not allowed in the American Army. They had a separate Black Regiment and division. And they weren’t allowed to carry guns. They thought they would shoot each other. So there were work divisions. Red ball express, they drove trucks. Or the engineering, they dug holes. And no officer is allowed to be above the rank of sergeant. They were officered by white officers. I mean it’s complete segregation, completely separate. I was from New York, I couldn’t believe this.15
The philosophy of Mute
Milton is summed up when Wright asks Morrison, “How much time do you have
left?” Harrison is asking how much time does America have left do deal with its
race relation problem. In introducing an SF element to the story, particularly
one where an invention offers an unlimited power supply, Harrison emphasises
the tragic loss to the human race when Morrison is killed by the racist
Brinkley. This loss is reflected in the story’s title, taken from a line of 18th
century English poet Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
“Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest.”16 It would be a human
tragedy in any event. However, adding a SF element takes the tragedy to a different
scale. The whole question of atomic power and scarcity of the world’s resources
was an immediate concern in the 1960s. We can visualise how the future may have
changed for the better if Morrison’s invention had gone into full-scale
production. Only SF can accomplish this.
By
The Falls first appeared in Worlds
of If, January 1970, and has been anthologised at least seven times. Like Mute Milton, it is a story about white attitudes towards black Americans. To
suggest the emotional content of the story, it is necessary to quote, at
length, a descriptive passage which also demonstrates the quality of Harrison’s
prose:
He saw a falling ocean, a vertical river – how many millions of gallons a second did people say came down? The Falls stretched out across the bay, their farthest reaches obscured by the clouds of floating spray. The bay seethed and boiled with the impact of that falling weight, raising foam-capped waves that crashed against the rocks below. Carter could feel the impact of the water on the solid stone as a vibration in the ground but all sound was swallowed up in the greater roar of The Falls. This was a reverberation so outrageous and overpowering that his ears could not become accustomed to it. They soon felt numbed from the ceaseless impact but the very bones of the scull carried the sound to his brain, shivering and battering it. When he put his hands over his ears he was horrified to discover that The Falls were still as loud as ever. As he stood swaying and wide-eyed one of the constantly changing air currents that formed about the base of The Falls shifted suddenly and swept a wall of spray down upon him. The inundation lasted scant seconds but was heavier than any rainfall he had ever experienced, had ever believed possible. When it passed he was gasping for air, so dense had been the falling water.17
By The Falls is the story of a newspaper reporter, known
only as Carter, who visits Bodum, an old man who lives by The Falls. Bodum’s
house is specially built to protect and shield it from The Falls. It has thick
walls and armoured glass windows like "little suspicious eyes"18
watching out towards the torrent of water. Once inside, Carter notices the
absolute silence compared to outside. The house is insulated from the outside
world, a “positive statement of no-sound, a bubble of peace pushed right
against the very base of the all-sound of The Falls.”19 Through the armoured
windows Carter notices first a ship and then a house plunge down The Falls into
the bay below. He notes, astonished, that the passengers have different
coloured skins from those of the inhabitants below The Falls and also that the
house had been partially burnt. However, Bodum continues to make coffee,
ignorant to the strange events outside his insulated room. Carter asks, “What
is up there above The Falls – on top of the cliff? Do people live up there? Can
there be a whole world up there of which we live in total ignorance? But he is
forced to answer his own question: “Yes…There is a different world above The Falls
and in that world something terrible is happening. And we don’t even know about
it. We don’t even know that world is there.”20 Before his eyes, the
water of The Falls turns pink and then red, “the color of blood.”21
He asks, “Blood? Impossible. There can’t be that much blood in the whole world.
What is happening up there?”22 Bodum, who has remained impassive
throughout, shows Carter a piece of paper washed down The Falls. Clearly
written on it, in English, is the word “HELP.” However, neither man understands
the writing. Bodum states, “It is meaningless. It is no word I know.” Carter
replies, “Nor I, and I speak four languages.”23 By The Falls
ends on an ironic note when Bodum states, “I have been here over forty years,
and if there is one man in the entire world who is an authority on The Falls it
is me. I know every thing there is to know about them.”24
By
The Falls is a metaphorical vehicle
for Harrison’s argument that mainstream America is ignoring the plight of
blacks. The Falls are a metaphor for the flood of social change that was
rushing through America when the story was written in 1970. Bodum, whose name
is an anagram of “dumbo”, has built an uncomfortable fortress to protect him
from this social change. It is also impractical, despite the ingenuity and hard
work of its builder. In time, the house will erode before the power of The
Falls just as social change in America would destroy the last bastions of white
dominance. Bodum is a symbol of dumb, unthinking compliance. For example, when
Carter asks, “Perhaps there is a whole new world up there…just like ours,”
Bodum replies, “I never speculate.”25 When Carter notes the
different colour of the victims’ skins, Bodum states, “Skin is skin, just skin
colour.”26 When Carter notes
that a house swept down The Falls is partially burnt it is evidence of the
violence perpetrated against blacks. However, Bodum reacts irritably by banging
a pot against the sink and asking, “What do you newspapers want to know about me (my emphasis).”27
Once again, Stover criticises the
assumptions underpinning Harrison’s story. In it, he claims:
blacks are the only ones in pain and whites the only ones who hate. This presents the blacks as collective victims (all in one passenger ship) in need of collective justice. The cause of social reform here supplants the demands of the constitutional order for personal accountability, on the unlovely assumption that achievement “lies beyond the ability of individual blacks to achieve it.”28
That he is going beyond the story is obvious since his criticism does not reflect anything that actually happens in By The Falls. Rather, it would appear that he has attached “baggage” of his own when he talks of, “constitutional order.” Harrison is a liberal whereas, according to Harrison, Stover holds right wing views.29 It is possibly for this reason that Stover reads things into the story which are not really there. For example, his emphasis on the symbolism of the black people “all in the one passenger ship.”
Despite his criticism, however, Stover acknowledges Harrison’s “unmistakable moral passion.”30 By The Falls is, by Harrison standards, an unusual story in that it combines elements of fantasy rather than science fiction, with social commentary. Harrison is no lover of that particular genre and has commented, “Fantasy novels do suck…there are people writing fantasy novels who are imitating people who are imitating Tolkien. People who’ve never read Tolkien!”31 However, By The Falls works extremely well as a short story and is a good example of the depth of Harrison’s imagination and his ability to produce intelligently written, multi-level stories.
American
Dead was first published as part of
a book of short stories called The Year 2000 (1970). Leon Stover
believes this story to be about “the absence of gun control laws.”32
However, this is only an element of the plot. A more plausible thesis is that
Harrison has used an exaggerated prediction of what the future of America may be like to warn of the dangers of
alienating and ignoring black Americans now. In this respect, it goes far
beyond the attack on complacency in Mute Milton in that, in drawing a direct comparison between the Civil Rights
movement and the war in Vietnam, Harrison forces the reader to ask difficult
and disturbing questions of American society. In many ways though, American
Dead is a typical Harrison short story. It is bitter and violent, although
not overly so. Furthermore, the violence is necessary as it is used to further
the story’s message. Harrison states:
I
don’t do short stories anymore, I used to be very angry all the time. Angry
short stories, thinking short stories…in the good old days you built a name. I’d do
a book a year. A serial then later as a book. And in between I’d do a lot of
short stories. Half a dozen a year because the magazines are important and
people see your name there. And they build your name, and they knew you, who
you were. That’s where I built my name through the years. I mean, I also wanted
to do short stories. I could see stories I wanted to write.33
American
Dead is the eye-witness account of
Italian reporter Francesco Bruno. For the first few pages it seems that he is a
war correspondent in Vietnam. However, as the story progresses we realise that
he has actually been smuggled into one of the Southern states of the USA. There
he meets Mau Mau, a black guerrilla leader, named after the Kenyan terrorist
organisation of the 1950s. Mau Mau’s group attack a U.S. Army supply truck and
distribute its contents among local black villagers. There is an element of the
“Robin Hood” myth here but later in the story we realise that this is not
Harrison’s aim. The more appropriate analogy is with Vietnam in that the Viet
Cong were only able to exist with the aid of local people such as these. As in
Vietnam, Mau Mau uses Viet Cong tactics of hit and run raids, using the U.S.
Army’s size and rigid military structure against it. As in The Defensive
Bomber, the war has been brought
home to America. Ironically, however, the story is about a civil war between
black U.S. citizens and white U.S. citizens rather than the country drawing
together against an outside force. To an extent, this is an extrapolation of
the social strains in America in the 1960s, the anti-war movement verses
pro-war forces. As if to illustrate this, Mau Mau states, threateningly, “Now the military was glad to have black
boys for cannon fodder, in Viet Nam and the like, and those boys learned real
good how to use all the fancy devices.”34
Mau
Mau discovers that a captured officer from the truck, Lieutenant Adkins, was a
participant in a massacre at the town of Ellenville. The massacre was
perpetrated as an act of revenge for the apparently accidental death of a white
Army nurse. The officer supervised the gang rape of an innocent black girl
before killing her. Facing death, Adkins resorts to abuse. He states, “You
black Jew Communist nigger come down here from the North and look for
trouble-you’ll find it, all of you-because before this is over you are going to
be dead or shipped back to Africa with the rest of the apes.”35
After making sure that the camera is rolling, Mau Mau shoots Adkins in the
head.
Adkins’ last, defiantly racist remarks aimed at Mau Mau seem,
superficially, to justify his killing. However, Bruno argues with Mau Mau over the killing. When Mau Mau states,
“People like this you can’t talk to-except with a gun,” Bruno replies, “Do you
hear yourself? Do you know what you are saying? This is what Mussolini, the
fascists said, when they took over Italy. This is what the hysterical
Birchites, the Minute Men, say in your own country. You are parroting their
words.”36 Mau Mau is forced to agree. He states, “I guess you are
right. They always said that we needed education to change, and I guess they
were right, too. They taught us. We got the message. We learned.”37
It is extremely ironic that Adkins had accused Mau Mau of being a communist
whereas Bruno accuses him of fascism. Both doctrines use the same methods –
brutality and intimidation.
Harrison makes the point that war dehumanises and makes savages of us
all. There are no real heroes or villains here. Adkins may be hateful but he is
a product of his environment. He has grown up in a society where racism and
violence are acceptable. Like Mau Mau, he has learned to hate. To Adkins, the
ultimate degradation is the murder of a white woman. He has been brought up on
the Southern myth which advocates respect for white women but to a ridiculous
degree. He obviously has no respect for black women, however, as he is
complicit in the rape and murder of an innocent girl. The tragic cause of the
massacre is not clearly known by either side. It appears that Adkins friend,
the white nurse, was killed by mistake. However, he is so consumed with hatred
that he sees only evil in the actions of his enemy. Similarly, Mau Mau has been
conditioned to believe that violence is the only answer.
The
tragic history of the Vietnam conflict is constantly alluded to in American
Dead. As Mau Mau insists that the camera film the execution of Adkins, one
is reminded of a horrific incident which occurred in the after math of the Tet Offensive in 1968 when the head of
the South Vietnamese police, General
Nguyen Ngoc Loan, shot a Viet Cong prisoner in the head in full view of U.S. Press and Television cameras.
Similarly, the massacre at Ellenville is reminiscent of the My Lai war crime of 16th March
1968 when US troops raped and murdered between 200-500 Vietnamese villagers.38
The ordinance is the same as that used in Vietnam, from the M16 rifles, to the
all too familiar helicopters. Only the end of the conflict promises to be
different. This is not a war of unification and integration but of alienation
and separation. The Black Power movement in America rejected integration with whites.
So when Bruno mentions that Mau Mau is
rumoured to sit on the Black Power Council of Ten, this is an obvious clue as
to what direction the story will take. American Dead was written as part of an
anthology, edited by Harrison, called The Year 2000. In the introduction to that book
Harrison states, “The future begins today. We will shape the future by today’s
actions.”39 This is what American Dead is about. A timely
warning about race relations and the divisive nature of war.
Rebel
in Time (1983) is the only full-length novel by Harrison to feature a main
character who is black. It is part detective story and part alternate history,
a formula the author has used successfully in other novels such as Make
Room! Make Room! and A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (1972). Sergeant Troy Harmon, a black
Vietnam veteran now working for military intelligence, is tasked to investigate
Colonel Wesley McCulloch, head of military security on a top secret research
project at Weeks Electronics Laboratory. McCulloch has a clean military record.
However, he has been buying a large amount of gold, not in itself a crime, but
worthy of investigation in view of the secrecy surrounding the research
project. Harmon breaks into McCulloch’s house and discovers that the Colonel
has bought over a quarter of a million dollars in gold. Knowing that McCulloch
has no interest at all in reading books, Harmon takes note of some new books in
McCulloch’s bookcase. They include Ordeal by Fire, Gone with the Wind,
and, significantly, Kingsley Amis’s alternate history novel The Alteration.
When Harmon reports this to his superiors, he suggests a meeting with the Colonel under the guise of investigating a subordinate. During the meeting, Harmon notices that the Mississippi-born McCulloch has still retained a deep Southern accent. He also notices that the Colonel has taken an immediate dislike to him. Harmon goads McCulloch, hoping that he will make a mistake. His plan almost works. When Harmon declares that he will be reporting a minor rule infringement to his superiors, McCulloch states, “You just do that, you n… lieutenant, just do that”40 Harmon wonders what the Colonel was about to say, but it is soon revealed: “Nigger! Colonel McCulloch said as the door closed behind Lieutenant Harmon’s back.”41 It is at this stage that McCulloch’s plans are disrupted. A girlfriend, Marianne, discovers saddlebags in his closet. They are obviously part of whatever scheme the Colonel is plotting as he takes the girl back to her apartment and viciously and callously murders her and a roommate. McCulloch’s racist tendencies betray him however. Before leaving he scrawls the words “OAFFEY PIGS DIE” on a mirror, obviously hoping to misdirect the police into thinking that the murders have been committed by black radicals. However, McCulloch had failed to notice in the darkened room that Marianne’s roommate is black! The local police discover the connection between Marianne and McCulloch and Harmon is notified. He accompanies them to McCulloch’s house where he discovers that both the Colonel and the gold have disappeared, the gold replaced by a note to Harmon which states, “Keep looking for me jig. But you’re not going to find me!”42
Harmon is now given increased security clearance and access to the
secret research project “Gnomen” (the pin on a sundial) which McCulloch was
supposedly protecting. It is only at this point, eighty one pages into the
novel that an SF element is introduced. Until the head of the project, Dr
Roxanne Delcourt, informs Harmon that they are actually working on a time
machine, the novel had been a straight detective story. Harmon discovers that a
senior assistant on the project, Allan
Harper has also disappeared. A search of Harper’s home reveals that he has been
murdered by strychnine poisoning. Further enquiries reveal that Colonel
McCulloch has erased Harper’s computer records and replaced them with another
message for Harmon, “Jig, I said that you weren’t going to find me.”43
McCulloch’s letters are now being intercepted. One is from a curator at
the Smithsonian institute. When Harmon questions the curator, he discovers that
McCulloch has stolen blueprints and a working example of a Sten submachine gun,
a deadly and easily manufactured weapon dating from the Second World War. Further
investigations at the laboratory reveal that an object weighing exactly what
McCulloch and the gold would weigh has been sent back in time to the year 1858,
three years before the start of the American Civil War. Harmon is unable to
investigate further, however, as he is relieved from the case due to cumbersome
military logic and inter-departmental rivalry.
Harmon now has a personal interest in the case, however, and is not
prepared to give up easily. He gains access to McCulloch’s psychological reports
which show that the Colonel is an ex-Klu Klux Klan member with, “repressed but
still violently held anti-Negro sentiments.”44 Harmon comes to the
conclusion that McCulloch has travelled back to 1858 to change the outcome of
the American Civil War, “to alter history so that the South would win.”45
Harmon decides to follow McCulloch back through time and thwart his plans.
The
remainder of the novel takes place in the years 1858-1863. Harrison paints a
gritty, realistic picture of the life of a black man in the Southern states as
well as comparing and contrasting race
relations in the present day to those of the 1850s. For example, Harmon ponders
that he is, “Behind enemy lines again. In his own country – but still not his
country. Not yet.”46 Harmon tracks McCulloch down and learns that he
is planning to mass produce the Sten gun and distribute it to sympathetic
officers in the Southern military such as the then Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart.
When Harmon learns that McCulloch is manufacturing bullets for the Sten gun at
the government armoury at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, Harmon decides to join
abolitionist John Brown in the famous raid of 16th October 1859.
Unlike our history, the attack is a success. The guns and ammunition, as well
as the tools for making them, are destroyed. However, in making his escape,
Harmon is confronted by McCulloch. Harmon asks him why he used Harper’s Ferry
to manufacture the bullets when he must have learned about John Brown’s raid in
school. There is an exchange of gunfire and, with his dying breath, McCulloch
asks “Who is…John Brown?”47 This is a deeply, ironic ending.
McCulloch’s poor standard of education in Mississippi, “The state in the union
with the lowest educational standards,”48 meant that he never
learned his Civil War history. He read Fletcher Pratt’s Ordeal by Fire in preparation for his scheme. However,
as Harrison points out, it is possibly the only book about the Civil War not to
mention John Brown.
Harmon cannot return to the 20th Century. Fittingly, with McCulloch’s
gold, Harmon forms the first Negro battalion in Boston, The First Regiment of
Massachusetts Coloured Volunteers. The Regiment is formed in time to fight at
the beginning of the war whereas in the history books Harmon read as a child,
the first coloured regiments were not formed until after the war had begun.
Harmon and McCulloch's actions have created an alternate history. He is visited
from the future by Dr Delcourt and offered the chance to return home. He
refuses, however, choosing instead to fight and die with his men.
Harrison tries hard and successfully to write believable characters.
Harmon and McCulloch are given extensive, in-depth backgrounds. For example,
the author gives a detailed history of Harmon, from his upbringing in South
Jamaica, New York, through his college education which leads to a BA award in
History, to Harmon’s draft into the U.S. Army, and an insight to his morals
when we learn that he has informed on his old Commanding Officer who was
involved in drug pushing in the Military Police. With McCulloch, however,
Harrison manages to paint a picture of a professional, dedicated military
officer who is, at the same time, a callous, psychotic racist. McCulloch
believes in the myth of the South and has lied about his past to reflect this.
Whereas he states that he is from a, “rich ante-bellum family fallen on bad
times since the War between the States,”49 Harmon reveals that, in
fact, McCulloch’s family is, “White trash…spongers and grafters, with the whole
lot on welfare.”50 The contrast between the men could not be more
obvious; the black character, Harmon is principled, moral, and brave whereas
the white McCulloch is a sordid racist. McCulloch cannot believe that a black
man can show these qualities despite the evidence before his eyes. When he
learns that Harmon has followed him through time he thinks, “The jig had
followed him after all! He never would have believed that a creature like that
would have had the guts. Not guts, just stupidity, animal reflex like a
snapping turtle hanging on after it was dead.”51 In underestimating
Harmon, however, McCulloch’s racism is his downfall.
Alternate History is a growing sub-genre of SF. Indeed, Harrison has written a number of novels on this theme including, A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (1972), and the West of Eden and The Hammer & The Cross trilogies. His premise, of an alternate outcome to th U.S. Civil War, is not original - Ward Moore’s 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee had the Confederacy win the war - however, much of the detail is. From the choice of weapon for McCulloch, an easy-to-produce Sten gun as opposed to Harry Turtledove’s choice of a complicated AK47 in his 1992 copy of Harrison’s novel Guns of the South,52 to Harrison’s accurately detailed portrayal of his black character Troy Harmon, Rebel in Time is a thoroughly entertaining read. Harrison writes a multi-level story which works as an adventure novel, a detective novel, an alternate history, an SF “time travel” story but mostly as a social commentary on the illogicality and senselessness of racism.
Notes
1 Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of
Science Fiction, (London: The Science Fiction Book Club, 1962)
58.
2 Harry Harrison, The Best of Harry Harrison, (London:
Futura, 1980) 89.
3 Harry Harrison, personal interview, 6th Jul. 1997
4 Harry
Harrison, “Great Figures of SF--John W.
Campbell: reminiscences by a writer/editor who knew him,” World Science Fiction Convention, Brighton, 28th Aug. 1987.
5 Harry Harrison, “Mute Milton,” The Best of Harry Harrison, (London:
Futura, 1980) 98.
6 Thomas
Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A History
of America’s Civil Rights Movement,
(New York: Plume, 1991)
166.
7 Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry
Steele Commager, William E.
Leuchtenburg, A Concise History of the American Republic 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983) 512.
8 Harry Harrison, “Mute Milton,” The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura, 1980) 93.
9 Harry Harrison, “Mute Milton,” The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura, 1980) 93-94.
10 Harry Harrison, “Mute Milton,” The
Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura, 1980) 94.
11 Harry Harrison,
“Mute Milton,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 94.
12 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 77.
13 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 77.
14 Harry
Harrison, personal interview, 18th Sept. 1998.
15 Harry
Harrison, personal interview, 6th July 1997.
16 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 77.
17 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 156-157.
18 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 157.
19 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 158.
20 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 163.
21 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 163.
22 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 163.
23 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 164.
24 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 164.
25 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 161.
26 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 162.
27 Harry Harrison,
“By the Falls,”
The Best of Harry Harrison, (London: Futura,
1980) 163.
28 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 77.
29 Harry
Harrison, personal interview, 18th Sept. 1998.
30 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 77.
31 Harry
Harrison, personal interview, 6th July 1997.
32 Leon Stover, Harry Harrison, Twayne’s United States Author Ser. 560 (Boston:
Twayne, 1990) 79.
33 Harry
Harrison, personal interview, 6th July 1997.
34 Harry Harrison, “American
Dead,” The Year 2000 ed.
Harry Harrison New York: Berkley Medallion, 1972) 242.
35 Harry Harrison, “American
Dead,” The Year 2000 ed.
Harry Harrison New York: Berkley Medallion, 1972) 247.
36 Harry Harrison, “American
Dead,” The Year 2000 ed.
Harry Harrison New York: Berkley Medallion, 1972) 247.
37 Harry Harrison, “American
Dead,” The Year 2000 ed.
Harry Harrison (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1972) 248.
38 Michael
Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand
Day War, (London: Mandarin,
1991) 373-78.
39 Harry
Harrison, introduction, The Year 2000 ed. Harry Harrison (New York:
Berkley Medallion, 1972)
12.
40 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 42.
41 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 45.
42 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London: Grafton, 1986) 68.
43 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 96.
44 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 133.
45 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 136.
46 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 167.
47 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 247.
48 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 253.
49 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 99.
50 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 100.
51 Harry
Harrison, Rebel in Time, (London:
Grafton, 1986) 207.
52 Harry
Turtledove, Guns of the South, (New York:
Ballantine, 1993).
Title Page and Copyright details