Review: The Stainless Steel Rat

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a huge Harry Harrison fan as a teenager, which was 20+ years after this book came out, but in an era when the computer technology didn't yet seem quaint. I went so far as to learn Esperanto under his influence, and my first novel was very much in his vein, except without the humour. That novel is firmly trunked, not because it was written by a teenager and is therefore bad, but because it was heavily influenced by Harrison and also Heinlein, and is therefore... not representative of my more mature self.

He does, at least, spare us facile atheist sermonizing in this book, unlike some of his others.

As a teenager, I thought he had a distinctive voice, but now I realize that the breathless momentum of his prose is largely the result of the author not knowing how to punctuate, and his editors not correcting him. There are very few commas separating grammatical units, a number of missing vocative commas (around terms of address - the very basic "let's eat Grandma" error), and a profusion of commas used to splice together what should be separate sentences.

The main character makes some sexist assumptions about his female antagonist-slash-love-interest, but I wasn't sure if that was the author being a man of his time or if it was supposed to be the character being an idiot, as a satire on action heroes like James Bond. I decided in the end to extend the benefit of the doubt.

The former-criminal-undercover-rogue-agent story is serviceable without being excellent. Other books in the series are funnier, if I remember rightly, or at least more absurd (I'm thinking of the aliens who find the protagonist more attractive the uglier his disguise becomes). All in all, it doesn't stand up well to a re-read for me.

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