Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!: A Memoir

by Harry Harrison

In Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison! are the recollections of one of the grand masters of science fiction, on his storied career as a celebrated author and on his relationships with other luminaries in the field. This memoir is filled with all the humor and irreverence Harry Harrison's readers have come to expect from the New York Times bestselling author of the uproarious Stainless Steel Rat series. This also includes black and white photos spanning his sixty-year career.

Genres: Audiobook, Biography, Autobiography

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 2014

About the author

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

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

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jessica Strider]

Pros: fascinating story, engaging

Cons: ending feels abrupt

This memoir is split into two parts. The first details the surprisingly fascinating life of science fiction author Harry Harrison. The second part is a series of essays that were meant to be incorporated into the main text but the author, unfortunately, passed away before that could be completed. As the essays contain some overlapping information, it was decided to keep them separate from the main text. These essays provide more in depth information into aspects of Harrison’s life that were otherwise skipped over or barely touched on in the book: his friendship with John Campbell, turning Make Room! Make Room! into the film Soylent Green, how he played with some of his writing ideas to make book series out of them, etc.

I haven’t read many memoirs. Most people - frankly - don’t live particularly interesting lives. Interesting, I mean to say, to people other than themselves. Harry Harrison, who was born in 1925 and passed away in 2012 just days after completing this book, lived a fascinating life. He served in World War II (in the US), he lived in Mexico, England, Italy, Denmark, and Ireland. He knew a lot of the early movers and shakers of the SF world, and participated (sometimes ran) conventions around the world.

The text is pretty engaging, keeping me reading long past the parts I thought I’d find interesting (his WWII service, living overseas after the war). He keeps the book upbeat, mentioning that things were bad at certain times but not dwelling on the details. While the story is told in a linear fashion, he does jump ahead at times. So, for example, the same paragraph that introduces the woman he married - and spent 50+ years with - also explains how and when she died.

The essays provide a lot of interesting side information, though the repetition of things from the text and the lack of narrative momentum given the rest of the text made the last few harder to get through. The ending feels a bit abrupt as a result. While the main text has a nice conclusion, the essays - not meant to stand alone - don’t. Having a short conclusion by someone else would have fixed this. By pure accident I read the acknowledgements after the book (I must have skipped the page by mistake), and it actually forms a nice conclusion, with some remarks by Harrison’s daughter.

While this isn’t a book I would have picked up on my own (I was sent a copy for review a while back), I’m glad I gave it a chance. And having enjoyed Harrison’s writing style, I may need to expand my reading of his works beyond Make Room! Make Room!.

[Jim Razinha]

Delightful memoir of a life well lived. I've not read much of Mr. Harrison...always found somebody else to read, but I recently read the first of a trilogy I found at an antique shop and now I want to read more (as time permits...I only have so many books left to me!) I'd read Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers long ago and reread it in 2016, but never picked up the Stainless Steel Rat, or his Edens, or really any others.

Harrison had a wit. I didn't know he was an Esperanto aficionado ("I speak Esperanto like a native, or as Damon Knight once said, 'Harry speaks the worst English and the best Esperanto I have ever heard.'" - "native"!) And picked up many languages in the countries he lived in. Amazing and envious ability that.

Harrison has words of wisdom for writers plying their trade:

This is the craft of writing: knowing the market and writing just what the market wants. It’s a win-win situation. You have discovered what certain editors and readers want. You have satisfied that need and earned a few bucks in the process. There is certainly no shame involved. To put it simply: writers write. But how is this done? First you must face the truth that writing is a conscious craft. Yes, the good old subconscious works and inspiration helps. But as a wise man said, “Writing is 1 percent inspiration— and 99 percent perspiration.” It is very hard work.
[and for specific writing...]
I have written and sold such diverse items as men's adventures, Westerns, a small biography of Lena Horne, and detective stories, each with its specific needs. That’s the secret of genre writing: study your market.

And wisdom of the image writers face... When freelancing and living with his in-laws after a time living in Europe, interruptions would ruin a day's writing because the thoughts would fly:

The door never opens while I am at the typewriter. Joan knew that— the children imbibed that knowledge with the first air they breathed. Still the door opened, my fingers froze, my jaw gaped wide. My mother-in-law looked in and said: “Harry, since you are not doing anything, would you go to the store for me?” What a storehouse of content, meaning, and attitude in that single sentence. How neatly it summed up the nonwriter’s attitude toward the writer’s craft. This sentence was so perfect— of its kind—that I have passed it on to many other writers. Years later it was quoted back to me; now part of the Apocrypha of our trade.

"since you're not doing anything..." Sigh.
The Harrisons moved a lot, and having escaped the in-laws with a move to California, Harry found himself a surprising island of reason in Coronado:

The politics got right up my nose too. That part of the world where we were living was very right wing— they’re all ex-navy and it’s in their blood. It made for an uncomfortable environment. On an earlier visit to America, my cousin Debbie had thrown a party. She was an accountant and all her friends were in the same trade. I was chatting with one, an ex-navy man now employed by H& R Block. Which says a lot. The conversation went: “So you’re Debbie’s relative?”“First cousin.”“Great to have relatives you get on with. You still live back east?” (The following conversation is quoted verbatim.) “No. In fact I live overseas. In Denmark.”“So you’re a commie.”“Sorry…?”“You have socialized medicine, don’t you?”“Yes, but—”“So you’re a commie.” He turns about and leaves. No attempt to listen to the benefits of the Danish medical system. How happy we are to use it. How capitalism and socialism mix easily to all our benefits. What had happened to my country? Had big drug and big pharma worked such a mind-blowing change?

Sad, and nearly true, but not all Navy are that way, Mr. Harrison...not all Navy. Still, when Brian Aldiss visited him, he observed

Brian enjoyed the frontierlike quality of Imperial Beach but, sadly, it was time to leave . Brian and I were enjoying a last beer when he hesitated— then said with feeling, “I’ve enjoyed every moment— so don’t get me wrong …“But I do feel that you are knee-high in a waist-deep culture.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.

I wonder what Mr. Aldiss would say about the depth of today's American culture?

I was glad to see Harrison's - and the class he was teaching - assessment of E.E. "Doc" Smith:

We came to the conclusion, after a lot of discussion, that the readers of “Doc” Smith were all prepubescent little boys, and not only that, but the Gray Lensman was also a prepubescent little boy— you take down his zipper and it’s smooth, there’s nothing underneath it at all! E. E. Smith had a PhD —he worked as a chemist in a donut factory.

And Harrison thought him a nice guy...just not a writer. And yet

I have a letter in my correspondence file from Terry Carr saying how terrible “ Doc” Smith is. I said, “How old were you when you read it? ” He said, “I was twenty -one.” I was eight years old, and let me tell you, when you’re eight years old it reads pretty well. It’s age-dependent, bad writing and stupid plotting, and a lot of juvenility.

Yep.

On the atrocity his story Make Room! Make Room! became, "Soylent Green", and the filming, he said of one scene

Then [Edward G.] Robinson took this really dreary, badly written scene and before our eyes built a new scene that embodied the essence of the book and the film. Old wooden-faced Heston had to actually act a little bit—

Nailed Heston!

More on writing, Harrison says of peer reactions to his Stainless Steel Rat series

The problem is that fast-paced humorous adventure stories are rarely taken seriously. Books that appear to be written quickly are actually harder to write. The story moves at a faster pace, but only because of the work the author has put in. Sentences are shortened and paragraphs have fewer sentences. Punctuation becomes simpler, with commas dropped so that the reader zips through the sentences. Dialogue is punchier. It is disappointing when critics say “he writes hastily.” I still have to do my homework and get my facts right.

And his essay on how he developed West of Eden (not included in the main body of the book because Harrison died before they could work it in)... a lot of getting facts right. Impressive, he says he had 30,000 words of notes before even starting the novel!

In addition to more Harrison books on my horizon, he also mentioned a book by Chapman Cohen that I have to hunt down. Meanwhile, full circle, a delightful read.

[Galactic Hero]

I remember discovering Bill the Galactic Hero in a bookstore when I was around 13. It was in the corner of a small Coles or something, maybe in the train station, and some older guys were chucking at a book. I think it was the pictures inside of On the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure, and I went over a checked it out after they left and bought it. After that, if anyone were to as me who my favourite writer was the answer would be an immediate "Harry Harrison!", and despite not having read too much of him lately, that'd still be the default response today.

So imagine how worried I was when the opening chapter turned out to be a bit of a rambling mess. Had he waited too long to write this? Luckily, it somehow smoothed over pretty quickly (perhaps the intro was written last?) and I thoroughly enjoyed everything else. What a life! Thanks for sharing, Harry, and I look forward to continue going through your extensive bibliography for years to come! The standalone essays at the end are all top notch.

[Michael]

Hmm. I loved The Stainless Steel Rat when I was a kid, but now I'm thinking that may have been immaturity on my part. This book was tedious and eye-rolling.

No mention of his first wife or Isaac Asimov. Hmm.

[Ramon A Carabeo]

A life well lived !!

One of the masters of writing and humanities, a great human, this book reads like a Stainless Steel Rat adventures my respect to him and his supportive family

[Michael]

A great memoir by the sci-fi master. It reads like the first draft (especially toward the end), but I'm glad that Harry Harrison had been able to write it at all as he died mere days after finishing the bulk of the book.

[Theediscerning]

This is a real eye-opener, and a great personal history of one of SF's original greats. It's not going to be noted for its written style, which due to his ill-health and the circumstances around its construction is quite naïve and disjointed, and possibly too flowery and over-personal at times. Yet it manages to fully convey the live as lived, and for that we have to be grateful.

Harry comes across as a personable, opinionated but intelligent man – very much beholden to his long-term marriage. He also comes across as someone who certainly liked his drink, made friends easily all around the world (a lesson there for many modern Americans, even) and who was very bad with money. Is that surprising, however, when we learn that even at the stage of having a young family and little income, Mr and Mrs Harrison employed maids? – something you just don't think of in relation to sci-fi authors. Still, for the fan on any level, this collection of memoirs and fragmentary essays – and lovely photos, sadly uncaptioned in my e-arc – will bring back memories of reading HH, so Make Room! Make Room! for it on your shelves.

[Kel Munger]

The venerable science fiction writer Harry Harrison, who died in 2012, is most remembered in American pop culture as the genius behind Soylent Green, the 1973 Charlton Heston movie with the famous line, “Soylent Green is people!” The title of the novel is Make Room! Make Room! (and it’s available in a low-priced ebook), which is the word play Harrison took for the title of his memoir.

He did much more than just write one excellent book about the inevitable effect of unsustainable human growth and the concomitant exacerbation of the class hierarchy. Harrison infused all his science fiction with a sly sense of humor, engaging an international audience, and promoting fan conferences. ...

(Full review on Lit/Rant: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/108074...)

[John Adkins]

Harry Harrison's memoir was sometimes sad, sometimes inspirational, and all of the time interesting. While the book is not perhaps the behind the scenes tell all of the science fiction world that it could of been it is a look at a fascinating writer who led a singular life. What comes clear as you read this work is Harrison's devotion to his family, his love of the craft of writing, and the many ways that his interest in Esperanto worked to open doors in his life. If you have ever read any of Harrison's work or are simply interested in the history of science fiction then I recommend Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!

[Dan Buchness]

Thank you, Harry, for this last minute grand insight into your world. Truly too bad you weren't able to finish it completely to your satisfaction, but it was great none-the-less. The additional notes [on each book/series] alone are worth reading through if you've ever wondered about what's behind some of the books. Great way to round out understanding of this complex writing beast (both for what you KNOW he wrote and was attributed to him, as well as what you didn't even know he was behind).

[Ralph Carlson]

One of my favorite types of non-ficion is the memoir by one of my favorite writers and this one is a very good one.

[Deedee]

Dewey: BPL: Biography