Interview with Harry Harrison

6 July 1997

Dublin, Ireland

 

 

Can we talk about the Eden series?

Now theoretically it should be recording every word we say. I hope. 

West of Eden  - I had the idea for the book and I had money in the bank at the time, and  I realised that it was a great big idea. The basic idea had been around a long time and still no-one had written a book about it, if the dinosaurs existed and what would life be like with mankind and the dinosaurs. I got started on a 160,000 word book - it was that big an idea. So I got a whole lot of friends and academic groupies I know John Pierce, Professor John Pierce … all professors… Head of Bell Labs, sci-fi fan, Jack Cohen, professor of Biology at Birmingham. They all teach Ph.D. courses: Tom Shippey has his Department University of Leeds, Linguistics and Medieval Studies. I went to them. I created a picture of a Yilane culture. Of the alien culture and their whole history.

I had about 30,000 words of material before I wrote the book. And no plot! I turned around and I said, "Now, what kind of a world would it be? What would they do?" Tom Shippey, Anglo Saxon Scholar, Latin Scholar, did the language for me. So I leaned upon people who knew much more about these things than I did. I just shaped the whole thing and asked them the right kind of questions. I mean Jack Cohen, Biologist. I know that frogs carry the young, sometimes males carry their fertilised eggs on their back.. One species carries fertilised eggs in their mouth for a couple of weeks. I mean that's pretty hairy stuff. So the males carry eggs. They go through a dormant period. Therefore the females have to be the dominant sex, physiologically. I mean Fem lib have hated me since then.I didn't do this for Fem lib! I tried to make a totally alien race on this world which comes out of other animals not mammals and is totally alien in every way.  Possible facets of that Yilane, the Saurians, exist right now or in the past. I did a lot of work, maybe a year before I started writing the book and it worked out.

Gary Wolfe in Fantasy Review, 1984, asked, "Why intelligent dinosaurs - why if they remained dominant would they need to have evolved intelligence? And why a rigid class bound matriarchy rise with vengefulness and jealousy?”

Why intelligent dinosaurs? Well why not? There were smaller dinosaurs that had sizeable brain capacity at the time. We're talking about 16 million years! At that time mammals were the size of shrews and we developed intelligence. Why couldn't another species develop it when they had all the same things going for them? And what was the other part of the question - why class? Well why not? The males are very subservient ... like female roles in the rotten Arab countries. And, so they don't have a written culture they have a hierarchy culture. And talent rises to the top. This comes out of the science, which is completely biological you may remember.  And they never heard of fire! Our science is all based on fire and elements of heating things and cooking things and burning things. Theirs is biological. So this is a structure that came out very naturally. I didn't compose it that way. It just became, once you've stuck with the physical facts of their life, it's the logical outcome. They don't have fire, they don't cook their food. I mean at one point they're all eating their flesh raw. They're all dripping gobs of blood - Ah Ah AAAGH! Enzymes, enzymes they can digest ... I remember in Mexico that they use Papaya. Papaya contains an enzyme called papayin, which is nothing but a meat tenderiser. Papayin is a natural enzyme which you shake on your meat and it softens the connective tissue so you can eat it. They had to kill the cows in the morning, 6 o’clock while the meat is still warm. They had to put it on, I had my Yilane' put on enzymes to  pre digest their meat so that they could get it down. To get rid of the blood image and the teeth and everything. But everything came out of the, with good reason, out of the physiology.

Tom Eason in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, 1984, said that New World Primates were descended from Old World Primates. So if the Old World Primates didn't exist, how do the humans evolve in West of Eden?

There again, the New World, Old World monkeys,  anthropologist friends helped me out with this stuff. Leon Stover, who I wrote Stonehenge with. We had to separate out the continents early on to get the god damn dinosaurs out of this, out of our world. But we, at that point there were new world and old world apes. Mankind as we know it came from old world apes. I had them develop from new world apes. They had the same amount of time to do it, they had the same 60 million years and ¼ which means there were certain physical differences ¼ had tails, you may have noticed one of the groups had tails and there are physiological differences between new world and old world apes but they still parallel evolution. Parallel evolution would end up with mankind as we know it with some slight differences. I can say that, I didn't know this when I started the book. But I worked with some very good people! And if you want to argue with this guy you can argue with him but you can't argue really because there's a sound reason, which I didn't always tell you, behind everything. I mean the science is pure biological science. I called Jack Cohen and I said "Jack, how important is the centrifuge to biology?" He says "Couldn't live without it." You gotta help me with a living creature spinning ... I had it going back the other way eventually and I said what about filtering columns? That'll work just as well, it’s slower. I don't care, they have all the time in the world. So every detail of the science and the psychology and the biology had been thought out well in advance. I put a lot in the back of the book but, I mean, its there! I'm glad this guy's arguing these things, but he just happens to be wrong that's all.

So you were more concerned with the story and the plot?

I hadn't thought of the plot at all until I ¼ had these people in a group, you know, the Yilane’ they had to clash in the modern world, they had to come to the New World at some time or other - come from Europe which is all nothing but lizards. Now for the reactions. That reaction I got from the fact of working with these guys. Jack Cohen, biologist, has some Geckos there which are nice little things which don't move and then GROWL! they'll take your finger off in a second. Tom Shippey was absolutely paralyzed by them! Jack said I'm one of the thousands of people who are completely immune to fright by lizards or spiders. Nothing bothers me. I think they're very interesting you know. But Tom was actually terribly frightened. And I said well that's a good part of the plot. If he feels that way, maybe when these two meet each other they'll  automatically hate each other. And these are normal reactions to each species. All the plot came our of normal things. Once I had an idea the plot came out of physiological reactions. And the human beings, the hunter-gatherers this is out of history you know and I know what they're like and how they work and the hardest job, of course, was getting the lizards going. What would getting their culture be like, that was a lot of fun to do. Then when the clash comes then you have an impenetrable language. How did they learn to communicate? Well I had a kid captured by them. Kerrick and the girl and a lot of people said "Oh that goes back to America, being captured by Red Indians." I forgot about that, it’s nothing to do with that at all! Yeah, I read those books as a kid. But no, I had to do that for the plot line. I had to have communication between the two groups. So out of stress comes plot, out of plot comes story. And I had a very good time you know! I found out all sorts of things from Stover that I needed some more advanced cultures you know? The history of the world is replete with  pockets of cultures where some could read and write and some are still in the Stone Age. And I said "Yeah, no problem at all". Great, I need some Eskimos in the North, I had a culture there. I had one in the west. So out of reality comes idea, and out of idea comes plot and out of plot comes story. The best thing is, I met someone from Yale , I met him at a party. He said "You bastards I really had an exam the next day and I was up to 4 in the morning finishing the whole book. I said "Good!" That's what I want to do to a reader.

I read elements of the frontier in the U.S. with the Europeans pushing further and further into Indian territory, but then again I saw Vainte as Margaret Thatcher!

Ha ha, oh this was well before Thatcher! No I don't think the Indian thing really ..... Basically it could apply. We have an advanced culture against a primitive culture and, but, unlike human culture they had nothing in common. Basically it was an in-born hatred they had against each other all the time. And the fact they lived in different climates. They had to cross over and clash  along one edge there. But , if there are echoes of other things, like Indians, as I'm sure there are, it wasn't conscious. The conscious bit was evolving the Yilane culture and using a typical human culture, travois, carried by elephants you know. And then when they met each other what would happen? And 300,000 words later, 400,000 half a million words it was done!

When the Yilane considered germ warfare, it had echoes of Nazism.

They ... did they have germ warfare? I don't remember [one of the Yilane’ scientists was developing a germ to kill humans] I'm not sure of that, germ warfare. No, I guess they had a biological base to their science that's the main thing. Anything biological they can do. And whereas the human beings were just plain hunter-gatherers from the stone age - no crops you know. Pre-Babylon you know? No written history or things like that. And I hope all that came out of the clash of 2 different things. But there always have to be over tones from history, my goodness, why not?

Do you feel you get fair reviews? Science Fiction usually gets bad reviews from the mainstream press.

Talking about reviews, I mean, I've always had very good reviews. Always. And argumentative ones occasionally, well why not? I've only had ¼ I've just had a couple ¼ I was teed off recently. SFX, a stand English magazine, they had a negative review of The Stainless Steel Rat. The Stainless Steel Rat I've had nothing but praise for! It's a action adventure story. This guy's taking it apart on a sexual basis! I've had a very good run for my money. I don't really have any bad reviews. And I have good sales you know, and my books stayed in print and I should be very lucky about it. You know in the states there are two reviews, the Library Journal and Kirkus Review read by Librarians.  Librarians buy books on the strength of this. So... and I've always been very well treated by them. My advance sales are always very good in the library. Fanzines and reviews are very good. But ah well, reviewers. ha ha.

How can anybody criticise The Stainless Steel Rat?

My feeling exactly! Yeah. What the hell are you doing? These things are downhill adventures. A certain amount of humor. A certain amount of humanism. A certain amount of atheism you know. And don't complain! No violence, no physical violence. In 9 books I killed one person. In the very 1st book. I mean I'm against .... You know they're adventure stories without being like Baen books which have nothing but war stories in the U.S. - it's violence - it's just dirty! It's pornography of violence I think. I can't stand it. There's too much of the heads rolling and guns bursting you know. It's not my stick.

Were the Bill Books co-written or ghosted?

Yeah Bill, the Galactic Hero and those other books. You know they have a thing in the states called share cropping where you have a series or character and you have other writers do work with it. Isaac Asimov used to do it with his Robot city thing. I never wanted to do it I'm not interested. but this thing I said about the pornography of violence in one package, they said, "Harry why don't we do a Bill, the Galactic Hero and actually do some anti war propaganda instead of all pro war.” So they eventually talked me into it. I was supposed to write outlines and ¼ the whole thing didn't work at all the way I wanted. These guys wrote bad books; I had to rewrite them completely. One book I threw out completely. Not much humor in them. Any humor I put it in myself and nothing anti war. I had a contract, I had to do 5 of them and I soldiered through and they actually wanted me to do more. They said don't do a thing Harry we want you name on them. I said "I DON'T WANT MY NAME ON THESE THINGS" (angrily). You know to hell with them. The second one I did myself [Bill the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Robot Slaves?]  Robot Slaves yeah that was a lot of fun you know. If they could all be like that but no, no, we all make mistakes. I'm a professional writer. I earn a living at it. [Well one mistake in 40 years isn't bad!] The only ones I did it wrong. The only books I did I really loathed I got one through. Every other book I've ever written I've always enjoyed the idea. I've never written a book for money that's something. If somebody says, "Write me this book," I say, "No, if I like the idea I'll do it. If I don't like it I won't do it." A publisher, Anthony Cheetham, said, “Do a blockbuster.” I said, "I don't write thrillers very much." He said, “No, we've got a strange ship like the Marie Celeste at sea and they find out its all empty.” If you're gonna do this, I'd just come over on the QE2 it's the most crappy ship I've ever been on in my entire life! Let's have the QE2 floating in the in the ocean empty. That'll make a really much better novel and he said, "Alright." Anyway, so he sold the film before he published the book, so he sold alright. He sold enough copies. I like the idea. I'd been on the QE2 from new York. I liked the mechanics of it. I liked the mechanics of having a whole ship sitting there engines running and "where is everybody?" [Like the Marie Celeste?] Marie Celeste story but with the worlds biggest passenger liner. And I also got back at it because I had such a miserable crossing you know. It had a good title too but neither side of the ocean was doing initial titles. QE2 DOA!

Could you talk about Soylent Green? I read you had some problems.

A lot of problems well... the problem was I didn't get very much money out of the bastard. They cheated. They organised a whole firm just to cheat me and it was MGM all the time. They had a lawyer - I forget the name of the firm. I remember their logo, a big silver screw over a U. Screw U productions! You know. But the worst thing was that I had no control over the screenplay. It was written by a total incompetent Stanley Greenburg - but I was on the set. I was living in California at the time and I went down while they were shooting it. I talked to the actors. I talked to the director, I talked to the producer. I had a lot of things done that they had forgotten about. I mean like simple things .... they bought it because it was the only overpopulation book that takes place tomorrow for people alive today. They forgot that and they had it opening up this New York full of green smoke. Where the hell’s the connection? It's gotta tie up with life today. That's not New York of the future. So the next time I saw the producer he said, "You cost me a lot of money," and I go, "I hope it did." I hired Chuck Braverman. Chuck Braverman you know he did the history of the U.S. in two and a half minutes on TV. Ah that Chuck Yeagleman! he did the opening credits. They show still photographs with music going on. First Indians in wild America, the first settler, the iron horses, factories.  You build up and you know you're in New York City of the near future. And the other thing is I gave out copies of the book to all the actors, camera men and everything. I had them all wildly enthusiastic about it. I told you about Eddie Robinson and told him what his role in the book was and corrected outrageous scientific errors - you know they had this meat leggers shop there. I saw a set with a meatlegger. There's no meat in this total vegetarian period. They're talking about bits of dog and things. There’s a big pile of plastic bags there. This is America, California. I said, “What's that?” He said "Bags to carry home." Plastic! Plastic is made out of leftover oil. There is no oil left in the world. How do they take their food home? Like Europeans they take their own wrapping with them. "Oh they do that in Europe?" Yes, you bring your own bag. "I didn't know that." I knew that. Yeah, a lot of things like this. So, in a way it's a half spoiled story. But at least it does what only sci-fi can do, the background is the foreground. The real story is to tell the world we live in if we don't lick overpopulation you know. People come out of it not impressed with me but thinking about it. So, think about that film.

Do you still feel strongly about overpopulation?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Everything has gone completely wrong. Everything I predicted is exactly how I predicted only worse! I mean the world is full of problems. All the problems are overpopulation. Money not necessarily. Now we've got rid of atomic war we've got overpopulation. Where is the CO₂ coming from? People running cars. Where is the sulphur dioxide coming from? People crapping too much. Why are we destroying forests! People burning up the forest. Over population is taking us apart still and it's ...... madness is right  you know. Population growth, food growth is arithmetic and the crowd is just taking it all. Unless we think about it, we're not thinking about it. American reactionaries like Reagan stopped any American aid where they mentioned the word abortion. Christ! Abortion is only one of many varied choices. Birth control you know, they have Death control let's have some birth control! I feel just as strongly about it now as I did then. Or more so as there's no one doing anything  about it.

China encourages families of two or less? Do you agree with this sort of thing?

Oh yeah - there's a lot of things going on in the world but no real easy answers. China is having one child per family, have them raised as little gods. They treat these kids little dresses and everything - they're spoiled rotten. In India they pay 100 rupees on a station platform to have a vasectomy - SLASH SLASH SLASH! Wow! On the way home from work you can get a vasectomy! And the emotional problems of the world religions. Mostly the Catholics of course. The anti birth control, anti abortion and ..... hey the sun came out!

Why do you think that science fiction has so much problem being accepted by the mainstream?

Science Fiction and the mainstream? Science Fiction is a category field like Western, Detective, it's very annoying.  Presidents read detective stories, they're allowed to read them, but western is looked down upon  and love, romance, is looked down upon. Mills & Boone is looked down upon. The classic critics don't admit we exist and we exist outside their parameters. They can't read very well because they know nothing about it! That's the whole thing! They can't tell good from bad and they refuse our aggrandisers. They say On the Beach is not a Sci-fi novel and it is! And 1984 is not, and it is! I mean good writers,  Bob Shaw in good writing a Sci Fi novel, he can be very good. Some guys in the field like Brian Aldiss are far better writers than people who win the Booker Prize who are absolutely bad writers for the most part!

Critics maybe read poor fantasy novels and lump them in with Sci-fi. Most fantasy novels I've read have been dreadful.

Yeah, well they don't read fantasy of Sci-fi. I mean fantasy novels do suck. It's a whole new thing. I mean there are people writing fantasy novels who are imitating people who are imitating Tolkien. People who've never read Tolkien! You can't imitate that. I mean they are absolutely feet in mid air. But this is ¼ my favorite about bad writing, bad publishing is bad readers. I think there are so many readers now who come to reading through media. You know fans of  Star Trek and this crap you know and they don't recognise a good novel. Because there are no good editors in Sci-fi. Very few. There are a whole new field of young editors who have never edited good Sci-fi. And then of course, ultimately the writer is a lazy old sod. They write crap and then they can sell it. And there it is! But it starts with bad readers and bad editors and then bad writers. I know, I know them all! I know how lazy they are and how much easier it is to write a bad book than a good book. I couldn't write....I spent a year or two writing a book. How can you write crap and look at it every day. I have no idea. Must write a lot faster than I do!

I have a problem with fantasy. Its easier for me to believe Jim DiGriz can pull out a ridiculous machine to escape from a prison cell rather than have a magician wave a wand or spell & get himself out.

That's the old subtle distinction between sci fi and fantasy. What I would say though is Sci-fi is based on things that might be true or might work whereas fantasy, nothing is true about it, it couldn't be true, it's just airy fairy. I mean most of the science in Stainless Steel Rat is absolute nonsense. I make it up as I go along but it sounds good, you know what  I mean? It's funny. Whereas in the other straight forward sci fi I do I use Wells’s one novelty theory. Wells said, you know HG, Hubert George, that if a pig came flying over the hedge at you-that's fascinating, a flying pig! Wow! You know, great! But if houses fly and barns fly and cows fly it's boredom and stupidity. Therefore he would do a good Sci-fi novel and make one exaggeration, one lie. Like one lie that would makes things a lot easier, you can go beyond the speed of light. You can't of course. But how else do you get out somewhere? So you use that lie. Something like The Daleth Effect : one lie was you have a power source that can move a spaceship without any outside source of energy and that's all. After that everything is true. If you had that power source you could get to the moon in about five hours. You accelerate at 1G, you decelerate at 1G - no problem. You can get to Mars depending on where it is in 10-14 days it's all science! Given that one accepted lie. Readers are happy to do that. Readers like to see you give one lie. They'll swallow it, they'll suspend some disbelief and see if you can carry through with it. And you extrapolate and do a good story based on that one lie. Why not? I mean every , all novelists lie! They write about people that never existed for God's sake!

And the heroes are Danish.

Ah Christ! I mean ....

The Danes are unable to cope with the duplicity of other governments and their violence.

Yes. I'm a great believer in small countries. Having grown up in a big one, I really don't like it. Ok small countries can be wrong too. I lived in Denmark seven years. I love what they do there. They care about people, you know. The motto of the country is, "Few have too much and none have too little." They're caring people! When I wrote, you can see Israel, now it wasn't the quiet harbor it is now. There was fighting going on. But I did take the story out of Israel because they would have used it for war. Also, I just wanted to have once, a miraculous invention in a small country. Not in Russia or the U.S. you know? Change the point of view. I believe in small languages and small countries. A lot of fun happens in them.

I read 2000 AD's version of The Stainless Steel Rat before graduating onto The Best of Harry Harrison and The Streets of Ashkelon.

It's interesting - The Stainless Steel Rat an awful lot of my English readers read it as a comic strip in 2000 AD. It always ran one behind Judge Dredd as his violence was more interesting than the breasts and pudendum in The Stainless Steel Rat. But I found a lot of readers, the ones that grew up and stopped reading comics and learned to read books saw The Stainless Steel Rat on the shelf in a bookshop and said, "Great! I know that title" and bought it. So I really have, in proportion wise I have more readers in England than I have in America. The comic was never published there. And one book dealer told me that his all time best seller is The Stainless Steel Rat books. They don't sell ..... King will sell 1000 books at one time but  The Rat goes on and on and on. The books are on the shelf and they go off, they walk off forever. So it's a successful series.

At the Queen's University Sci Fi Convention a decade ago you criticised Judge Dredd as sexist, violent and juvenile. There were gasps from the audience because at that time 2000AD was really big.

Did I really? Ha Ha. I'll criticise everybody including Maggie Thatcher, you know Hamilton the former MP. Yeah I like to wake audiences up. Tell ‘em things they never thought of before. Why not? And he really was just a comic book character. Now it's worse, it's a movie. I sat through 20 minutes of it.

You had some trouble in getting Streets of Ashkelon  published?

Sci-fi is very middle class, very bourgeois. You couldn't use the word hell or damn [Or religion?] . No not at all I had it taken out of the magazine. I asked for it you know and also there was a middle class absence of religion. And being a hardworking atheist I ... an anthology Judy Merrill was doing The Thin Edge, I think, of stories way out that had never been published before on taboo topics. I said well gee I have a story on atheism that's never been published before and she said, "Oh send it to me." By the time I wrote the story the thing had gone belly up they never did do the anthology. And I sent it to my agent in NY. He said, "You can't sell this story it's got atheism." He was right! It went to every magazine in the United States and came back. At which point my old mate Brian Aldiss was doing a book that is still in print, The Penguin Anthology of Sci Fi. He said, “I'll buy it but on the reprint-sell it to somebody else first!” I sent to Ted Karnell in England. And Ted's an old friend, old fan. He said if Brian would publish it in Penguin he would publish it first. He may have been inspired but he had some spine then unlike the Americans! The world has changed. That story has been anthologised I’d say 100 times in 30 languages. And I finally came through with it anthologised in the Jesuit Monthly (laughter), in a high school magazine, a high school reader as well. The world has changed. ..

It's a good story to teach kids. It's interesting. I think more Sci Fi should be taught in schools because of that. Kids have too many distractions today to read boring books.

 

You've got to educate kids in school, you've gotta get them to read first. And sci fi is good to get them to read because they enjoy it and most of those stories they don't enjoy. And think piece, it gets them thinking about religion. About if there was a race without, could there be a race without religion? How would they be affected by religion? If a think piece like “The Cold Equation” is attempted. I'm sure you remember the story by Tom Godwin. Short story which demonstrates the difference between man made law and natural law. One you can break and one you can't. And it's a not too badly written story ... about a girl who smuggles herself aboard a little spaceship which is bringing down some serum to save her brother and a lot of people on a planet. But there was just enough rocket fuel to land the ship with the pilot and save everybody's life. And if she's aboard it will crash because it weighs too much. And the author tries to save her life. John Campbell said, “You can't save her life.” So, in the end, they push her out the door to save everybody on the ground. You can break man made law but you can't break natural law.  A very good idea. A think-piece. Sci-fi can do that. No other form of fiction can do that, I believe.

In Streets of Askhelon it was a good idea to have totally logical aliens make your point by looking dispassionately on religion.

By the time I finished it [The Streets of Ashkelon] there was no ambiguity, you know where I stood. I left the ending open. That's why the Jesuits published it. All they saw was a story, of you know, a good religious story. And it was a religious story! I showed three different approaches to religion. You know the Catholic one, or Protestant/Catholic one, atheist and people who had no religion whatsoever and were trying to find out experimentally.

In The Stainless Steel Rat series you seem to suggest that criminals can be salvaged from their life of crime and set in a new direction (even though in Angelina’s case this involved brain surgery!) I take it then that you don't agree with capital punishment - "the most criminal act imaginable in the terminating of one of those conscious existences."

The Stainless Steel Rat , the philosophy behind that, you know we have one life to live and the worst you can do is to deprive some person of his life. That is real crime. I don't talk about evil particularly cause there's all kinds of things you might say is evil. And, they're tongue in cheek. I don't believe there are good criminals particularly but this started out, a certain kind of a criminal. I mean, he's a good lad. I mean there's a history in fiction, of picaresque fiction, of the villain as hero and this follows through. And I carefully arranged the plot so he does more good than bad. I came up with some baddies for him to defeat and all his crime, if you look at it, is white collar crime or its like computer crime which nobody really seems to care about. I may end up giving a bad message to the troops out there but I think it's a much better message than 007¼

end of tape 1

secrets in publishing and I never reveal. Living in California my old friend Brian Aldiss came out to stay with us for awhile. None of us had much money in those days. And we had a little Sprite. My son had a sprite to go to college with, a little tiny thing about a foot and a half high. And I took Brian around with our little friend and got some speaking gigs at $100.00 a gig. We belted around Southern California in this thing. Like I say it’s open topped like an  MG midget the same car. You know the car - you just slipped into it. We were going down these freeways in California which are eight lanes in each direction. And we were doing about 45 miles an hour and these articulated lorries and trailers going by us (Growl!) We're looking up at the bottom of the hubcaps! The wheels are 12 ft high. We're getting bits of crap coming back  - My god it was awful! And I had a vision, a vision of a world where trucks ran forever. A Sci-fi writer gets an idea you can't stop thinking about it. What can I do here? So I generated Wheelworld where I knew the plot. Had to get from one pole to the other cause there's no axial tilt so it ends up burning hot one part of the year when they grow corn. A kind of fun idea! And I get them on this world. I wrote the book  and to do the book I had to postulate a history from Earth ... to put in the background. They came up from earth, there's a revolution, they put this guy out here because he was civilised ...

So the second book, Wheelworld, came first?

That's right I wrote the book. I had it all postulated. And the ending sort of left it that maybe the Revolution would go through. So that was one book so I sent it to the publisher and he said, "You know I don't feel it's complete Harry, you've sorta left something out." Oh, he's looking for a new book you know. So I said, "Oh right, it's the middle book of a trilogy  there is one before and one afterward," which is absolutely true. So I went back and did the first one and I was living in England then, living in England a lot and I did a take off on George Orwell which nobody even noticed at all. I had them drinking pints instead of litres you know. Called them Proles. Not one reviewer even mentioned that and I though it was so obvious! And I imagined a real nasty world, a real nasty world in Britain, so I had to fracture society to generate this thing. And I wrote that one to lead up to this guy leaving Britain. The Revolution had already taken Britain apart, had it taken place in an even more horrible America in the third one. And they wipe everybody out you know. So it was an interior plan to sort of lead out the plot in my head to justify the second book and I went back and put in the things to cause that world. But that's how it came about. Of course, once it was done as a trilogy, they published it in one big volume To the Stars .

I saw elements of Thatcher's Britain in Homeworld.

Oh Thatcher was going strong then. I talk about an outmoded system [Monetarism?] called monetarism! Proven wrong (laughter). Oh yeah, Christ This is Thatcher's children. Living in at the time I was living in Ireland at the time so I could see Thatcherism ... Always put the boot in if you can you know. I believe in that.

2000 AD stole that idea in their story Helltrek.

Yes yes. Did they really? I didn't notice that.

Did they give you any credit for it?

No, I mean I didn’t ¼ it wasn't drawn to my attention. One of the other magazines did steal The Streets of Ashkelon. The artist, whose name I forget, just took the plot, good artist, comic artist who writes his own story. And he ripped it, ripped the whole idea. And at a convention at least three different fans pointed it out to me. Oh I said that's very interesting! I went round to the Editor of this magazine-maybe it was 2000AD, it might have been. I don't remember now-and I pointed out the fact behind the story. I said you know, let's come to a meeting of the minds here. This guy has stolen my story. “Oh yeah, we'll give you credit.” I said I'll give you credit that it's based on a story by Harry Harrison and there's one other thing I'd like. "What's that?" £500.00 pounds (laughter). It looked like a good round figure, so they gave me 500 quid and gave me a credit "This story is based on " you know.

But you didn't really mind someone using your story - imitation being flattery and all that?

Well I mind stealing it but they're still gotta pay for it, that's all. Give me credit for the story and it's happened more than once. I won't go into details. It's part of my contract that I couldn't tell anybody about it, that somebody stole a book of mine. I have a lawyer thing where I get a % of all the sales and a credit on the front saying "Based on an idea of mine" . If you're gonna steal  you're gonna pay for it that's all.

I'm not gonna ask you where you get your ideas from! But can you explain the mechanics of writing?

Short stories start with a single idea and you do a twist on it. You see it clearly. But novels are bigger. All it takes is a single idea. I mean you can see it in West of Eden. What if dinosaurs weren't destroyed by the meteor, what would the world be like today? My very first novel was Deathworld. I wanted to show if you ever really had a pure physical superman what would he be like. You put him in deadly danger and he’s stupid because he’s lifting weights all the time like Schwarzenegger. The Stainless Steel Rat books are always one single idea. It comes to me like that, then I have to write the book. A couple of years back I was reading about some revolution in Central America, fake elections. I said, “Oh boy, if they have a fake election put The Stainless Steel Rat in America,” you know the idea. A single, clear idea, something you want to talk about, something you want to expatiate on, something you’re interested in. Plague From Space: there were so many rotten books about medicine in Sci-fi.. I was in Denmark, I was a stringer for a medical magazine. I have a pretty good medical background of writing articles for this magazine and was around doctors a lot and I realised how bad Sci-fi medicine was. There were no doctors writing it. When you have a real plague from space, what would it be like, how would you lick it? How could it be real, but exotically real, and I came up with it and a couple of year later my editor called and he said, “Harry there’s a guy named Michael Crighton stole your book, did a film called The Andromeda Strain.” Yeah ¼ I talked to him on the phone for a while, he’s just a new member of Science Fiction Writers of America. He never called me again. West of Eden: old Crighton has done this and he’s after me. My agent sent me a copy of a cover from an American book of a dinosaur with a telescope on the bridge of a ship looking out! You know, Wow! I can’t say I didn’t televise dinosaurs but I certainly brought them to the attention of the public, you know (laughter).

The aliens in Henry Turtledove’s World War series look remarkably like the Yilane.

I’m glad you noticed that. I noticed that too and old Harry, I like Harry. He kept writing the same book I did about 10 years later. I wrote Rebel in Time and about 10 years later, about 20 years later he wrote a thing called Guns of the South with exactly the same plot. I read a review of it and I said “what’s this – you’re reviewing this book, haven’t you ever read my book on it, you never even talk about me!” And of course the reviewer had not read it and I wrote that. And Harry read the thing and he wrote to me, he says, “Gotta hold of a copy of the book,” and he says (in an old voice) “Harry,” he said, “if I’d read your book I wouldn’t have written mine!” (laughter) I believe that. I met him afterwards. A very pleasant guy. When I was starting Stars & Stripes Forever I wrote him. I said, “Harry, we’ve been crossing trail too much. I’m going to do a book on the Civil War and you’re doing Civil War books”. He said, “Yeah I am – not this kind!” I said, “Good! Let me have this one and you do yours later!”

Alternative histories are great. I always wondered when someone would write about the premise, “What if the USA spoke German instead of English.”

There was never any doubt that American history would be English. It might have been Dutch if the Dutch hadn’t sold Amsterdam to the English on the Plains of Abraham. If Canada hadn’t fallen to Wolfe we might have been speaking French you know. I’ve been Esperantist all my life. Esperanto, the world’s second language. Israel did not have an official language when it was formed and they took a poll – they found 80% of all Jews there spoke German! So the thought of Israel speaking German was a little too much and since Zamenhoff invented Esperanto as Jewish. There was a push by the Esperanto society to make Esperanto the official language but they decided to modernise, to make it modern Hebrew you know, and use that, so it was a complete ¼ Hebrew that’s spoken in Israel is more artificial than Esperanto is. They’ve made–invented a new language on the structure. A very ancient and bad structure; no vowels or anything like that, you know, a lot of guttural sounds. But people don’t realise the more primitive the language the more complex it is. It’s only when we get modern language we get simplicity, the text is sorted out.  Esperanto’s a lot of fun. Very international: I first learned to speak it in the Army, in a class. I was a gunnery instructor. It’s so boring shooting off guns. They had a book saying learn Esperanto in 13 weeks so I did the whole thing and learned Esperanto. And of course I never heard a word spoken until I went to New York after the war and then I learned to speak it. I could read and write it but I couldn’t speak it. But I’ve traveled a lot – it’s an awful lot of fun travelling Esperanto. We came to Europe in the 50s. There were no planes! We came by ship. There were no American tourists, there were no, almost no German tourists at that time which is changed. I’d knock around and I’d go to the local Esperanto society and make instant friends and party and went placed and do things. And give talks on Esperanto .. I gave one living in Denmark, I gave one as an American talking Esperanto to an audience of Swedes and Danes about Mexico where I was from. It’s international that’s very obvious. Esperanto is the international language. And hopefully someday it’ll get better but .. the only thing against Esperanto is like – the metric system is a good idea! People don’t like good ideas, they want emotions. I mean here we are in Ireland talking about emotional problems, on the first Sunday in July! If it does succeed it will be through computers of all things. There’s a guy wrote a program in Esperanto as a target language where now if you have a machine translation, you have to write a program French into English, English into French, English into German, German into Italian! This guy has a program where you do English into Esperanto, Esperanto into English and every other language. Esperanto can simplify it a bit for machine translation. It’s a great idea. We’ll save millions on it you know. It’s so easy Esperanto is a simple second language. It’s complex, you can say anything with certain modifications you can get absolute translation I mean I’ve seen Esperantist do everything. I’ve seen translations. They did a control group – 10 or 20 or 30 people. They did a passage from English into Esperanto, Esperanto into English – came up about 95%. They did English into French, French into English, about 50% came through you know it’s like the old whisper gag where you whisper something and ¼ there you go.

My favorite Rat book is the one with the aliens and the Grey men. It was so funny.

The Rat books are all insane. I have to be in a good mood to do them. And in that one the aliens I had the idea of saving the Galaxy, have all the aliens coming, the horrible crunchies and all that. They hate the “soft crunchies” I had Jim be a spy. I put in all the worst parts of the enemy. ¼with a bomb extracted with a tail you know. And, it was just keep coming in and seeing, and the alien comes on with a lot of tentacles. His hollow spaghetti head. And I’m just typing away and this alien says, “Hello Darling!” Darling! Where did darling come from? And I realised if I made all the most loathsome combination, it became the most attractive  thing to other aliens you know! Which leads you to think of pink nighties and everything. Trains, I mean once you open the door to some sort of madness you know there’s no closing it. They’re just good fun. They’re just a very good read. I enjoy reading a good book. It’s so hard to get a book you can sit down and say, “Well I’ll get a beer and enjoy this book,” you know. 

And ¼ talking about Sci- fi, in the mainstream, unless you’re an academic, there aren’t very many good reads you know. There’s the people who enjoy reading in mainstream English. I don’t review them. Nobody talks about them. During his lifetime C S Forrester never had any reviews. Or Dick Francis-I don’t see anybody talking about him. He makes a lot of money that’s all, because every one buys his goddamn books! I remember years ago at First Milford, the writers conference, it was all very complicated, the kind of writers there. Jim Blish was there, Damon Knight, Avram Davidson, Julie Merrill, Fred Pohl, and I hate this sort of a conference. I went to that one and am never going again. But they asked a question. They had to write down the 10 writers who influenced us and we couldn’t write down a sci fi writer you know. And the lists were completely disparate: Jim Garner had Nietsche you know! Auberon had a lot of heavy Jewish writers, philosophers. There was one name on all 10 lists. It was very interesting. And you wouldn’t guess it. Why bother making guesses? His name was Cecil Scott Forrester, born in Egypt. An English writer. But he depicted a foreign time that he could live in. Very realistic. Like the Hornblower books. You know you’re there in the Napoleonic years. This guy in the forest you’re in the jungle of Africa. African Queen! He _____ begin another period of magic adventure books. Tremendous! He couldn’t have been more successful but academia never admitted he was alive! I think he was one of the better writers of his period, one of the best writers. Like John Buchan. I mean when John Buchan was published no one thought much of him. I mean he was the nature writer of my childhood. Up in Canada they

[end of side].

 

to read Sci-fi. I read all good sci fi. I don’t think much good is being written right now. And I think I generate science, … I can generate my own kind of sci fi. Whenever I talk to young writers who wanna write science fiction I way read all the good Sci-fi it’s easy to find out what it is. And then forget it. And to learn to write, read good writers like Anthony Burgess, Kingsley Amis and learn how to write. Because most sci fi isn’t well written. That’s why you can’t go back and read any of the stuff you read when you were a kid. And it’s still the same, If someone recommends a book to me saying it’s really good I will read it, and enjoy it, hopefully. But I’ve read very little lately. The people I grew up reading are either senile or dead by now or have Alzheimer’s like poor old A E Van Vogt. Terrible ending to it, couldn’t understand it but talk about science, very hard science … very good. And he pointed out other books of himself. But, good writers are far and few between. I mean, there was a golden period of science fiction in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s. There were a lot of very good writers. And now Sci-fi is just like the rest of the mainstream. Have you ever read a Booker Prize winner? I don’t know, I’ve gone through, I’ve done the old thing about book shopping, reading the first three pages. [To me that’s like the Oscars. Any that wins is never worth watching] I mean there are good mainstream writers. Most of ‘em dying out. I used to buy Kingsley Amis’s stuff when it came out. Not when I knew him, before I knew him. Because I like his writing. And he feels the same way. He’s a big fan of Sci-fi. His New Maps of Hell. He wrote one of the world’s best sci fi novels. [He reviewed Skyfall] Yeah Skyfall. But he wrote The Alteration, a very good Sci-fi novel about a parallel world. His history was the Catholic Church runs the whole world. Yeah, a frightening thought. That’s what it is, a frightening world. The protagonist is a boy singer who they castrate – castratto, the Catholic Church was castrating boys right up until the 1900s you know- for their sins. Not that pride is any burden of mine. I don’t want to differentiate between one or the other. But when I saw him he had been up for the Booker Prize. He was short listed and he lost. He finally got a Booker Prize but for one of this worst novels! It was unreadable so that’s why they probably gave it to him! And he lost to Iris Murdoch The Sea The Sea’. He said, “I went down to the bookshop. I’d lost so I should read the book. I read it. I put I down and bought the new Dick Francis instead.” So. I mean try reading Mills & Boon! I mean, I find certain writing impenetrable and I work for the year. Writers we all… mind like sponges, we read every damn thing. I’d read my way through all the novels of the century when I was growing up. And by mistake-as I say I’m a great fan of  C S Forrester-by mistake, as a kid I pulled a book off the shelf by E M Foster called Passage to India which I liked so much I read it every single year. I know you’d never say he was a classic writer but it was a very good book you know. And I read 10 to 12, 15 books a week from the library, and they have no limit, it’s a public library, plus all the sci fi, all the club magazines. So I’ve done my, I’ve done my day in the barrel. I mean I like some of them, other ones I didn’t like. Some Sci-fi authors – my choice. I prefer stories that move and have colour to them – action. And that’s the way I write. I really shouldn’t bore the reader. I had Hardy forced upon me in school I tried, as a matter of fact, a few years back: Brian Aldiss said, “Harry we’re making money now, we have free time, we should have more time to sit in the garden and read Hardy.” I said, “You’re right.” Brian and I went out and bought two or three Hardy .. I couldn’t’ read ‘em! My dear wife Joan was another Hardy authority, she liked him…went out in the garden…she read them all through. I didn’t have to! I just can’t face him. I mean the time it takes to do things. Whereas other classic novels I read and enjoy. Dostoevski I grew up on. Continental author you know. There’s a lot of good writers out there but there’s a lot of crap out there. A lot of people .. like I say Mills and Boon I read but I enjoy. Pick up any book that I write. Non fiction to do with this new trilogy that I’m doing. I have two separate lives of Victoria, Queen Victoria. Utterly fascinating stuff. One on her side, one against her you know. Oh boy, oh boy! History is ever shuffling sands you know. I’m reading an awful lot of John Stuart Mill, I use in the book. Fascinating philosophy you know. I mean there you are, you get involved with something – read on!

 

The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted: the evil guys invade the plant which had their own system of Government which is right out of the text book! It’s anarchy. It has a bad name. But no one knows a thing about anarchism these days. That world is a world of hard working anarchy. Every single character there is right out of the Encyclopaedia Britannia. And not one person ever noticed. So much for saying you hate anarchy! This was just pure text book anarchism. So now you know more about anarchy. I put in some very obvious things like using the word “proles” in Homeworld. I don’t think they are noticed. I don’t think much of the critics out there. I can’t fault the readers, they shouldn’t have to notice it. They read it for pleasure but ah.. [Critics don’t take Sci-fi seriously?] But then Sci-fi criticism isn’t all that great. I stopped subscribing to the NY review of Sci-fi. I find it pretty boring. Reviewing books … the review is boring – the books are even worse you know! The few books I read on Sci-fi aren’t reviewed there. I gave up. L. Sprague de Camp, who I’ve known for 100 years, he must be 99 by now, wrote, God, one of the most boring biographies, autobiographies ever. It was utterly fascinating and so boring! SF Review included a chapter. Brian Aldiss said, “Sprague has great stuff”. I can’t get a hold of it you know. The best thing they publish is in all these crappy pissant reviews!

 

I was just in the army long enough to hate it. I hate the humiliation. Yeah, well my job is to destroy the military completely and, unlike Jerry Pournelle who wants to build it up completely. I mean it’s something we’re going to have to live without. I mean I have a love hate – I keep writing about military matters cause there’s  clash of violence there which runs right through mankind. But as for the army goes,  the things they do are very reasonable by their own terms but they’re disgusting by human terms like basic training – it’s designed to break you down before you go into combat. They must destroy you. That’s fine for the military but I don’t like watching kids being destroyed. Young guys who were physically destroyed. They went Section Eight you know, insanity. Physically broke down. Committed suicide all because the military wanted to get to make soldiers out of them. There’s something wrong with the whole system. We don’t really need better soldiers. We don’t need the army or the navy. And now we’re hopefully in a happier world we might get rid of them although I doubt it. We’re in love with the drama of the military. I just utterly loathe it and I do my best to get that feeling over. I’ll tell you this much, it’s worked-I think I saved somebody’s life. I met a fan, typical fan, 28 or so, beard, belly, you know. He said, “Harry I was graduating High School and I was 18 years old. I didn’t know what to do so I enlisted in the army. When I went home that night I read Bill, the Galactic Hero. Next day I tore my papers up!” Wow! I think, God, maybe I did save his life! There was a young teacher in California, my kids knew him. I spoke to him at the very beginnings of the Vietnamese war I remember his name, it was hard to forget, Robert Taylor, like the actor. And I said, ”Don’t get drafted, go to Canada, do something, don’t get involved in the military.” He was a very gentle guy, poet, wrote some Sci-fi. And he said, “No, no, the promised me if I enlist I will be put into school, teaching”. I said, “They’ll lie to you. You’ll never teach!” “Oh no, they wouldn’t lie to me.” He enlisted. They sent him over with a gun to Vietnam. Came back, Section Eight, complete breakdown, never worked since. Mental breakdown because he believed in the Army. I mean .. one I didn’t save, but you can’t save them all.

How did Vietnam affect your work?

You graduate at 18 in high school, secondary school, and 18 was the draft age. The war started in America in ’41. I graduated in ’43. So I knew the second I got out of high school I would be in the Army. And we all were [I didn’t know that]. Yeah we were drafted! They were drafting for all the services. They say the Marine Corps is volunteers, no! They were drafting for Marines, the Navy, Marines, everybody! And the physical examination consisted of putting a torch up your arse, look down your throat, didn’t see light you were in. That was it! I mean absolutely! We had a guy with a punctured ear drum. Another guy went blind in one eye, they put him in anti-aircraft looking through a [telescope] you know, turning it around, they don’t care! No, you’re all cannon fodder. There’s no way out of it. And I couldn’t get out of it. I knew I was going in but I wanted to stay alive you know! And Brian Aldiss said I’m a survivor. I think I am. If you go in the Navy you get drowned. If you go in the Infantry you get shot. But in those days in the Air Corps there was something like 35 men on the ground for one in the air. I’ve always worn glasses so I wouldn’t fly. So I became ground crew. Now it’s 395 on the ground for one in the air, these machines cost 10 million pounds you know. So I went to…worked in Macy’s packing boxes, I went with my own money to Eastern Aircraft Instrument School and learned to be an aircraft instrument repairman. I got drafted into the Army. The Air Corps was part of the Army in those days, Army Air Corps. I instantly got put into the Air Corps. Of course, I never saw an aircraft instrument again! Naturally I never got near them. But I …they had a test called MA, mechanical aptitude, and they had a whole series, all IQ tests. I got very high on IQ tests, 120 or something you know. And on mechanical aptitude, there’s a maximum of 150 you can get and I got 147. They put me into Norden Bomb Sight school. Computing computers, mechanical computers – the biggest war secret of all. And the day I went in it was either computing guns sights or computing bomb sights. I got on a gun sight. There was only about 30 guys in the whole air corps working on computers-gun sight computer you know. Fine! Put me on the ground. Got me through the war.

How many years were you in the Army?

Just 4. Ended in ’46 you know.

My father joined the Army in the 1950s as an escape from unemployment. I suppose that was the only good thing about it then.

 

Right but he enlisted!? Yeah we used to laugh at those suckers! I mean in the American Army you had a serial number, and it began with a  three when we were drafted. And … I remember mine – 329727 was East Coast. Another six …four digits you know. But everyone was wearing those dog tags. And if you volunteered  you got a one after the three. We used to laugh our arses off! (laughter), “Yeah, this guy went and volunteered!” It wasn’t an unpopular war but the military used to not be popular in the United States. Never thought the Army … England the Army was very important. People would go into it. America, it was only rebels and the rednecks from the South (with a Southern accent) in the Army at all. Pure segregated army between the wars, you know. America, as soon as the war was over, it used to be “get everybody out”, get out and go back to a small standing army. No glamour involved. The only glamour I ever seen related to the American Army was … I went to a convention at Texas A&M, Agriculture and Military, and they had all…you know the problem, you can get a college education if you enlist in the reserve and stay a couple of years in the army. And they had … in one of the halls [Is this the ROTC?] Well the ROTC you can get in any school but this … you owe them money .. but Texas A&M is a military school and if you …you’ve gotta be paid all your tuition, everything, and you came out you join the army for like 3 years or 5 years you know, to repay it. But they had in one of the Halls there, about 20 Medal of Honour winners. That’s like the Victoria Cross! And that was the only time I saw anything that was pro-military and that was hidden away in the middle of the school. Up until the Second World War America was very much against the military [A lot of your stories, particularly short stories, seem to be a reaction to Vietnam] Yeah. Vietnam was one of the biggest sins America ever had. I mean, it was a sinful war, I mean there’s a lot of sinful wars, this was absolute nonsense you know. And they gave Henry Kissinger who killed a couple of million Cambodians, a peace prize! A Nobel Peace Prize for bombing a country that wasn’t involved in the war! We were living in Denmark at the time. Then I went back to the States. The kids were in high school, and I remember the time I told my son Todd he’d be draft age in about a year, and if the war was still on, we’d move back to Denmark. Take him out of there. It took America apart. Will McNelly, a friend and Sci-fi teacher in college had two sons, one in the American Army got shot up a bit, the other went to Canada! It divided America right down the middle with absolutely no reason at all. There was no intelligent reason for that, not even a bad reason for that war! I mean Papa Ho [So you believe Eisenhower’s theory about the military-industrial complex?] Oh yeah, Eisenhower was completely right about that. He was a General, he should know! No they moved everything. Papa Ho, Ho Chi Minh hated Chinese and would have been happy to go along with everything America did at that time. He took on America … all that French nonsense. The French were wiped out it was a lost cause, there’s no way he could win.

End of tape

I hated the Army. I was a Sergeant. I could work the system.  I knew how to survive there. I hated it! I mean, I survived it. I didn’t do a damn thing but hated everything about the military. How they worked, the class structure, the power structure, what they were doing, how they were doing it, the food was incredibly awful. [Was there a lot of racism?] Well no, I wouldn’t say that. When I was in it was a segregated Army. Blacks were not allowed in the American Army. They had separate Black Regiments and Divisions. 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 you know what I mean? In fact I ended up the last couple of months of the war in Florida, Panama City, the gunnery school and then they closed the gunnery school up. And … “You’re a Sergeant? Well I’ll make you an MP.” “I’m not an MP, I’m a Sergeant”. “We close the school up,” he says “so Sergeant, it’s MP or KP!” I said, “I always wanted to carry a gun for my country”! And then I go sitting shotgun on a garbage truck guarding Black prisoners cause all the MPs were rednecks from the South thought having a Yankee (laughter)  guarding the niggers! The niggers were all guys from New York city who had told some Second Lieutenant to go fuck himself! And they would give them “company punishment” because you can put a guy in jail in the army for one year as a garrison prisoner because they’re not going to get court-martialled. At a court martial, you have to hear evidence so these guys get one year, all you do is finish just one year, of putting garbage in this truck and they get a decent discharge, G I Bill and go to school and all that. So I said I’m from New York city and they’d steal shells from me and go up to the garbage dump and shoot the shotgun and they’d shoot shells. I went to the Black men’s halls – they had separate mess halls- [So it really was riding shotgun, not a figure of speech?] Oh yes, exactly! On the cab of the truck sitting backwards riding shotgun. And I took six or seven guys and we’d go round the camp getting garbage and go out and dump it into the garbage dump. All they wanted was to finish. They were happy to do it. But that was perfect. I’m colour blind. I mean the army is very organised. If you come into the army and you’re a chef they make you a rifleman. If you come in from the Boonies and know how to shoot, they’ll make you a cook! The food was impossible. Whereas, all Black men look the same. I went to this hall, total Black, only Blacks had to go in there. And the head chef, the head chef, was the salad chef of the Waldorf Astoria in NY. And I look at his food and I…I hadn’t had a decent meal. So I gave the prisoner my shotgun to hold. “Oh come on Sarge!” “I’m the Sergeant and you’re the prisoner. Hold my shotgun-you eat after me!” I had this great life there, I never realised I was putting on weight! Fantastic food. You know, the military and the army have a good basic materials but completely screwed up by the chef.

In The Best of Harry Harrison, there’s a story about a Black man who creates an energy source from thin air but is killed by redneck sheriff. What was the inspiration for that?

This sheriff story. I was living in Denmark and Martin Luther King had just started his marches. And there was some hope for the South at that point. They were having a civil war in the south. Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and this was great. Something was happening in the States. They had a photograph of some pot bellied sheriff saying, “I don’t know Martin Luther King. He’s just on more nigger to me. Come to my parts and I’ll shoot him.” I got so offended by him. He 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 and .. I don’t do short stories anymore, I used to be very angry all the time. Angry short stories, thinking short stories. [That’s a pity because some of your best stuff is in short story form] Yeah, writing Sci-fi. People need editors, I’m an editor too. Short story writer, novelist. I used to write … 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 in there. And they build your name, and they knew you, who you were. That’s where I built my name through the year. I man, I also wanted to do short stories. I could see stories I wanted to write. You know, work it out. I don’t do any more of that.

Stephen King used to sell his stories to Playboy.

Did he, well I’m sure of that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Harry Harrison

18 September 1998

Dublin, Ireland

 

 

Could you describe the influence John W. Campbell had on your work.

 

John Campbell like unto a father to me, at least in science fiction. I grew up reading his science fiction magazines. I remember First Fandom. First Fandom you had to be active in fandom before 1938. You had to have fan group who published a magazine or write a letter to a magazine. In 1938 I was 13 years old. There was one newsstand in a subway that had it in one day earlier. I had to make a half an hour trip to get a hold of it. And John Campbell did what no other editor did. He enthused his writers…..materials story ideas, everything. He had a little wire into every readers mind. And you read that and you were jazzed up. He went to MIT, he was a physicist…I worked with him, in a sense colaborated with him. When I gave him an outline for Deathworld, my first novel, he wrote me a five page letter of  (pause)  not telling me what to do but expatiating on my ideas. You didn’t have to follow him. He never told you to, “do this.” In a sense, all my novels, the first five or six, are a sort of collaboration with John. I gave him an outline, he’d throw ideas at you. I did a film with Jim Gunn who was at the University of Kansas film centre, science fiction centre. So Gordy Dickson and I had lunch with John Campbell–have you ever seen the film? Get a hold of it, University of Kansas-Gordy and I, on camera. Gordy said, Gordon R. Dickson you know, but he always thought that the movie Lifeboat would make a good science fiction story. We created, on camera with John, this book idea and we eventually wrote a series which was actually published, and in that you can see what John had. I remember it being sort of give and take but watching the film afterwards, I was saying something, John said, “That’s not a good idea.” “[I replied] You’re right John, it’s not a good idea at all!” (laughter)

 

But he had a profound effect upon writers. I mean-John Campbell-writers hated him! He called me a communist, I called him a fascist. But he allowed me to write what I had to write and if it worked as a story he would publish it. The only thing he censored was In Our Hands The Stars where they ended up on a submarine on Mars. It was a propaganda piece. I talk about socialism. John said, “You know this is a one-way lecture, the other man should be allowed to say something.” I copied it into the serial, I copied the other man saying this, but I took it out of the book. It was my book and his magazine. The only time I gave him even a tip of the hat. He shaped so much of my writing. I came to New York once. I was living in Denmark, and he said,…he wrote an editorial, a maddening thing, infuriating. He said, “Harry, I’m thinking of doing a collection of my editorials with crime as an idea.” He said, “I want you to edit it.“ “Christ, that’s an idea!” I said, and I did do it. It’s around somewhere but it’s very hard to find copies of it. I used to fight him tooth and nail. He had this idea. Monstrous, that every riot in the world was caused by communism at a central computer there in Moscow. “Riot in India – aaargh! Moscow! I said, “John, this is absolute madness, this is crap. I can’t publish this in my name.” I said “John, if you want to put it in, you put that editorial in but take my name off the book, I will not have it.” He said, “Right, you’re the editor, you do it,” so we took it out. But he fought it right to the very end. There was a lot of give and take. Poul Anderson once said that having lunch with John Campbell was like throwing man-hole covers at eachother, you know KLANG, CRASH, BANG. He was very…I’ll miss him. A good man.

 

You didn’t feel under any pressure to write to a Campbell formula at all?

 

Quite the opposite. Never. I was the very opposite of him politically in every way but he never dictated, It was easy to sell him a series, hard to sell him a short story. If he didn’t like a short story, he threw it out. But a serial, novel length thing, he knew what it was going to be like from the very beginning. And if he did not like it, he didn’t put it in. But he would allow you the freedom to do whatever you want. He might argue with you, but he wouldn’t correct you.

 

Other Campbell writers like Heinlein seemed to share his views.

 

Oh yeah. There’s a very right-wing turn to a lot of science fiction. Authoritarian, ancient history, L. Sprague de Camp, but I think the overwhelming majority is much more liberal. The writers who wrote that (right wing) stuff, Jerry Pournelle, felt that way.

 

OK. The Defensive Bomber… What number? [Three] Ah, three! Get it right otherwise..xydkwoqqzlhrgf! (laughter). [OK. The Defensive Bomber, why did you write it under a pseudonym?] Oh, It was a (pause) I was doing original anthologies and I didn’t think my publisher would take it if I put my name on it. It was a very anti-American story. Bombing…General Le May said, “We’ll bomb Vietnam back into the stone-age.” Leon Stover, my biographer, even though he’s very right wing, said “How can he? That’s why they are winning. The Vietnamese are in the stone-age!” They really were. The machines were all gone. They carried everything on their back. And the atmosphere was such that I couldn’t put my own name on it. It wouldn’t get published. It was like a few years back, about ten years ago, the Troubles over here were very high. I wanted to write a book with Bob Shaw called “Brits Out!” Historic about when the Brits came out of Palestine, Beirut. Historically, we made the Brits leave! We did an outline but Bob was living in Belfast, I was living in Dublin and the publishers wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t put our names on it. There’s no way we are going to put our names on this book! So “Brits Out!” was never written and never published but it was a great idea for a book. [Do you still have the manuscript?] No, it was never written, we just did an outline. It was just that. What would happen if they did as they did in other countries, just turned around and left. This was when the Troubles first started, Britain wasn’t organising about Ireland, they wanted out anyway. It was not an unreasonable idea. What would happen. Here, Mr Paisley, what would happen. Bob was a Protestant, knew a hell of a lot more about it than I did. I used to get drunk with these people and they would sing old IRA songs, you know. This was all new stuff for me, deep feeling, you know yourself, you know what it is like. It would have made a nice book.

Four!

 

Number four! The students in The Defensive Bomber are not portrayed as heroes. What were you trying to say in this story?

 

They weren’t meant to be heroes. I was trying to make the point that it was criminal to go over there and bomb a country. Nixon and Kissinger got the Nobel Prize for Peace. It was American expansionism of the worst kind. Because I’m in Europe I’m always defending America because Europeans are so anti-American. They’ve got good reason to be! So that was my small blow at the war. [Did you ever get any feedback from the story?] No. People don’t wanna hear it. Papers won’t print it. If it’s the truth people won’t face it. The American system has got a lot of strengths. It’s more flexible than the European system. If Nixon had been the Prime Minister of England he would be sweeping the streets!

 

The Daleth Effect has a lot of disguise. It starts out as a Cold War thriller by by the end you realise it’s nothing of the sort.

 

I’ve always been a small country lover. I’ve lived in a small countries, Mexico, Denmark. I like small countries. I had this obvious idea, set it in Denmark and the villains are the Russian secret service and American secret service who are fighting eachother for this secret. Meanwhile the Danes are making a peaceful use of it! So I did what you can do with science fiction - I had this remarkable invention taken to a small country. Israel was at war. If Israel had it they would use it for war. Denmark was peaceful and democratic. Their last war was in 1870. They said, “We must replace our army and navy of great expense with one amswering machine. When you ring it up the machine says “We surrender!” A good country to have. About as neutral as you can get.

 

Leon Stover states that you did a lot of research on African-Americans. Did this help you write believable Black characters such as Troy Harmon in Rebel in Time?

 

I grew up in Jamaica, New York, saturated with Black people. In my school there were two Jews, two Greeks, two Germans. You couldn’t hate anybody! I don’t know about research. It wasn’t written research. I knew a Black homosexual guy, tea-totaller, middle class and I wrote about him in the book.

 

Troy Harmon is the only black hero in any of your novels. Is there a reason for this. I’m thinking here of the criticism william Styron got when he put himself into the mind of a Black slave in The Confesions of Nat Turner?  I have it Did you have a problem with that or do you feel comfortable enough writing a Black character?

 

No problem at all. I dedicate that book to Dennis Spencer, an old friend of mine. America, New York is a melting pot. I would never write on anything I don’t know about. I write a short story called The Greening of the Green, you must have seen it somewhere? [I’ve never read it]

 

End of tape.

 

World SF, the international organisation of Science Fiction professionals, was started right here in Dublin. First World Convention. And we tried to raise money for it. The original anthology, original story, the idea was a meeting of all the world’s scientists. They are in touch with aliens and the aliens, in exchange for scientific data, want to occupy human brains. The whole point was to give a national perspective of how it felt to be occupied by an alien in your culture. Of all the stories we got, they were no different, there was nothing national about them. Write about an alien occupying an Irishman’s brain? You couldn’t tell the difference (laughter)! Having said that, I wrote a story about it and…I wrote two stories: The Greening of the Green is about Europe going down the tubes and Ireland runs the whole world with mental powers! A very funny story. The other one-I’ve forgotten the name of the other one. It’s in the anthology World SF.

 

Number nine. Mute Milton: in The Best of Harry Harrison you explain the background to that, the Sheriff etc. But SF gives the writer the opportunity to write more…

 

Exactly! We can utilise anything. I mean, political ideas, racial intolerence, war. I wrote this short story about overpopulation of the world where they are allowed just one child and they have to fight and kill a guy. [A Criminal Act?] A Criminal Act, right. And it ends up with the girl saying, “I’ve got news for you.” [I’m pregnant!] (laughter) Put the boot in! I mean, I think science fiction writers are missing the opportunity a lot to make politial statements, racial statements. [It’s bad enough that Sam is killed in Mute Milton but he has just invented a machine that runs off gravity] Yeah, right. I was stationed in the South for three years. I know how basically racially bigoted they are. Being down there, I was in Florida in `45, I was getting a bus to town from the Airbase and we passed a chain gang, like a bad drawing of New York. You had a Black guy, naked from the waste up, wearing striped trousers. You had a little Southerner sitting in a trailor with a black hat and a shotgun. When you are a kid you know, this is not real, you don’t do this anymore. But they did! The bus stopped and everyone was sitting there-no-one looks, no-one said a word-and a big Black guy, strong guy, leans in and drops him [the driver] a nickel. No-one looks. You’ve gotta see this to appreciate it, to see the life they live. This damn book I’m writing, maybe I’ll get rid of the Ku Klux Klan in my book. They were right bastards. There was this guy named  Senator Bilbo, Mississippi. One of the biggest racists. We all knew he was a racist. When I was there, I heard him on the radio, speaking to other Mississippians on local radio, and [I thought], “What kind of culture am I living in?”  This guy was a moron.

 

If you think about my racial thing, I’m completely unbigoted anyway. I grew up in New York in a liberal family. When I saw this stuff in the South, it scarred me for life.

 

It’s hard to find believable characters in science fiction perhaps because it is an idea-driven genre. However, it’s not a problem you seem to have e.g. Jim DiGriz, Jason dinAlt and in the Eden series where the non-humans especially are very strong characters. How do you avoid this problem?

 

It’s because I’m a better writer than the other ones! (laughter) [That’s good enough!] Most science fiction writers can’t write very well. I spent half my life learning to write well and I really don’t want to write two-dimensional characters as science fiction does too often. It’s a plot-driven field. In science fiction the hero is the plot. Once I have the plot worked out, I try as well as I can to make sure I know who I’m writing about, all you need to make a three-dimensional character. And, it’s not difficult in a sense that if it’s a good strong storyline like Captive Universe, written while I was in Mexico where you couldn’t drive anywhere because it was all mule paths. I realised, if the world ended, they would never even know it. Everything they had already is there. So I had the protagonists with low IQs but by chance of fornication one has a higher IQ-a stranger in a strange land-what would his life be like? Then you can work on the characters. I’m not a reflex writer, I work very hard on my characterisation. The craft of science fiction is getting the plot right but the art is to make sure your characters have a separate life outside the plot. Which requires hard work, that’s all. SF writers are lazy, that’s one of the reasons you don’t see many alternate histories because it’s a lot of work, a lot of research. It’s much easier to sit down and write one more Tolkien parallel.

 

In the 1950s, during the McCarthy era, do you agree that science fiction was virtually the only mode of social and political criticism?

 

No. There were very few writers who would write politically. The world was frightened shitless. McCarthy tackled the army [that was his big mistake] Yeah, right, it was a big mistake. They’re monolithic. They don’t like that sort of thing. But, no, American went along with McCarthy. America had to fight Korea and Vietnam to realise that you just can’t take by reflex someomes right-wing opinions and fight to kill people. America never did it voluntarily. The only thing that ended America’s whole-hearted right-wing enthusiasm was losing a war. “We didn’t lose in Vietnam. If we had the right ammunition, right arms, we could have won…” (laughter) [John Campbell wrote an editorial before Vietnam called “How to Lose a War” in which he said America shouldn’t get involved in Asia and, anyway, communism might be a good thing for Asia. Which was very surprising coming from John Campbell!] Did he really? I don’t think I saw that one. I might have used that one but I’ve forgotten about it a long time ago.

 

[OK, The Daleth Effect, although the book I have is called In Our Hands, the Stars] That was my title. The Americans decided to change it. [I thought it was the other way around?]  No, no! The worst one was Ace Books where a guy wrote the cover title without reading the book, so you have nothing, no connection with the book! You had a cover painting and the title would match the painting. Philip K. Dick wrote about an interstellar whore house and Terry Car entitled it “Crack in Space” without even reading the book! (laughter)

 

[OK, this is question 13. I’m sure you’re fed up talking about Soylent Green!] No! [However, when l handed in my first draft of a chapter on the movie, my supervisor pointed out that, in the early 1970s, there was a fear of big business and perhaps the movie was trying to reflect this. Can you understand why Stanley Greenberg’s chose to add an element of what could perhaps be called “Corporate Cannibalism?] (Laughter) No. This was the deal, nothing to do with big corporations, Charlton Heston, Walter Seltzer the Producer, and me-at one point, Charlton was very politically minded, he was very much interested in overpopulation. He approached MGM but MGM felt that overpopulation wasn’t important enough to do a film about. So they went away and got a complete incompetent screenwriter, Stanley Greenberg, who thought, “Cannibalism! They’ll eat that up!” So, MGM bought it as a cannibalism film. So, inadvertently, because cannibalism wasn’t in the original book, we worked around that. We had to have it in there, Soylent Green, but it wasn’t at all relevent to the film at all. Background as foreground: the background was this horribly depressed world. Overfilled with people, overpopulated, polluted, and that was what the film was about. The little, nasty story happening in front of you was an irrelevence. It was that world, the background was foreground. We got that in the film. When they were shooting it, I made suggestions to change things that were absolutely madness in the screenplay. And it suceeded, I think, as a screenplay. The disgust factor. People would wake up and think, “That’s horrible.” I went to see it in San Diego and no-one had seen the film yet. In the lobby of American film theatres, like here, they sell popcorn and crap. They had lime-aid called “Soylent Green-aid” and people were knocking it back. They came out later on “Euggh” not too enthused by it! [So you don’t think Greenberg was trying to catch the spirit of the times, and make some sort of political statement?] No, quite the opposite. It was just a joke idea and he sold MGM on it. MGM put the money up

and ran with it. It really wasn’t at all relevent to the film, it just happened to be there. “Soylent Green is people” is a nonsense statement. The whole film was a statement itself of what was happening to the Earth.

 

Did you make any money from the Soylent Green?] No, no. the first thing they did was cheat me. They organised a company, a separate company, I forget the name but I remember the logo, a big “U” with a screw above it, “Screw U Productions!” They got a lawyer who drew up a bad contract and then, as soon as I signed it, the rights went to MGM and I never got another cent. They used creative Hollywood book-keeping. What they did, Seltzer and Heston, was borry the money from MGM and when the money comes in they both drew from the Gross and made five or ten million each, which means there’s no profit. The interest takes it up. So it never made a profit on the books. It’s Hollywood book-keeping, never made a profit. I had what are called “points,” my five percent of profits which never made a profit. Another film option I have, first day of shooting I get 50,000 dollars. First day of shooting they have all the money in the world, never expect to make any money after that!

 

Does it annoy you that people remember the line from the film“Soylent Green is people” instead of what the novel is about?

 

No, if I started worrying about being screwed, I’d spend my whole life sueing people. I expect that. [That’s good, I can use that last line!] Yeah, by all means. I have written eight screenplays, all of them commissioned. One by Disney, one by Roger Corman, one by Cy Endfield, the guy who did Zulu. But the main thing, if you commission a screenplay then you have to write it. Non-commissioned screenplays, one in 40,000 makes it. I’m always happy to do a screenplay. I did the original Heavy Metal storyboard. [It didn’t make it to the film version?] Well, no. I’m upset about that. Being a commercial artist myself, I worked with animation where we have no dialogue, just storyboard the whole thing. But the    rotten frogs wouldn’t sign the contract. We went to Paris and everything so, finally, Colombia backed out of it. I worked on the original artwork, I really worked like crazy. John Halos-the guy who did Animal Farm-they squeezed him out. They went to Canada-second rate animation, second rate story. I did six months of really hard work and got no money out of it. But, at that point, you don’t want money. [I think it bombed] It deserved to. If we’d have done the original, I think it was a hell of a lot better. Otherwise…it’s just a crap-shoot. I’ve written 42 novels, how would I write-if I do a bad job they won’t sell! I’ve written 42 novels, four juveniles, four books of short stories, 27 languages, biggets selling foreign author in Russia.Russians love my stuff and they pay me a bit of money too! Cash. I mean, “Cannot get cheque out, do you take100 dollar bill?” Yeah, I’ll take 100 dollar bill! I’ll take anything! Yeah, my books are selling 100,000 copies in hardback. [It would be nice to have some of those Russian books as souvenirs. Are they in cyrillic?] I throw them out! They give me ten copies of each, I keep one and throw the other nine out. [Wow! Keep me one then!] (laughter) I was the most stolen science fiction author in Russia. I sold 60,000 and got a penny a copy! If you get uptight about it, you’ll spend your whole life worrying about what you should have made. What happened is that I’m so popular there that now, the new books they sell. Everyone of my books is in print there.

 

Question 14. In SFX there’s an article called “Technicolour Mel” about Mel Gibson playing the lead in an adaptation of your novel Technicolor Time Machine. Is this true?

 

Oh Yeah.

 

Do you not feel that this is very ironic that of all your books that could possibly be made into a film, Hollywood have chosen this one?

 

No, I think its perfect! I’m just surprised it didn’t get picked up earlier because it has everything. It’s cheap to shoot cause you shoot on a soundstage. You shoot on a fiord somewhere, that’s fine. [But, it’s very anti-Hollywood] That’s it! Everyone’s anti-Hollywood. They hate the place. It sucks! I’ve never met anybody who works there, outside producers, who think it’s a wonderful place. Or the bank people. No, I mean it’s perfect! First off, I talked to Mel about it and he hates vikings. Woody Allen’s going to play the second lead, the second-rate producer. You wouldn’t think of Mel Gibson and Woody Allen together. It would be great.

 

Would you be writing into the contract this time that you want a say in the film?

 

Oh no. No, actually I’ve met the sceenwriter and he’s lifted the screenplay right out of my book. It’s out of my material and it’s a great screenplay.

 

 

 

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   Title Page and Copyright details

 

Foreword

 

Make Room! Make Room!

 

Why is Soylent Green people?

 

Bowb the Chingers!

 

Parallel Worlds

 

Afterword

 

Bibliography