The Harry Harrison Megapack. Harry Harrison
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Contents
THE ETHICAL ENGINEER
THE MISPLACED BATTLESHIP
THE K-FACTOR
NAVY DAY
PLANET OF THE DAMNED
THE REPAIRMAN
TOY SHOP
THE VELVET GLOVE
SENSE OF OBLIGATION
ROBOT JUSTICE
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Harry Harrison Megapack® is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved. Cover art copyright © 2014 by Kovalenko Inna / Fotolia.
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The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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“Arm of the Law” originally appeared in Fantastic Universe August 1958. No record of copyright renewal.
Deathworld originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, January, February and March 1960.
The Ethical Engineer originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, July and August 1963.
“The Misplaced Battleship” originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1960.
“The K-Factor” originally appeared in Analog, December 1960.
“Navy Day” originally appeared in If Worlds of Science Fiction, January 1954.
Planet of the Damned originally appearead in Analog Science Fact—Science Fiction, Sept.–Nov. 1961.
“The Repairman” originally appeared in Galaxy, February 1958.
“Toy Shop” originally appearead in Analog, April 1962.
“The Velvet Glove” originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, November 1956.
“Sense of Obligation” originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, September, October, November 1961.
“Robot Justice” originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, July 1959.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Harry Max Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey; 1925–2012) was an American science fiction author, best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973).
Harrison was an extremely popular figure in the science fiction world, renowned for being amiable, outspoken, and endlessly amusing. His quickfire, machine-gun delivery of words was a delight to hear and a reward to unravel: he was funny and self-aware, he enjoyed reporting the follies of others, he distrusted generals, prime ministers, and tax officials with sardonic and cruel wit, and above all he made plain his acute intelligence and astonishing range of moral, ethical, and literary sensibilities.
Before becoming an editor and writer, Harrison started in the science fiction field as an illustrator, notably with EC Comics’ two science fiction comic book series, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. In these and other comic book stories, he most often worked with Wally Wood. Wood usually inked over Harrison’s layouts, and the two freelanced for several publishers and genres, including westerns and horror comics. He and Wood split up their partnership in 1950 and went their separate ways. Harrison used house pen names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines and published other fiction under the pen names Felix Boyd and Hank Dempsey. Harrison ghostwrote Vendetta for the Saint, one of the long-running series of novels featuring Leslie Charteris’ character, The Saint. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, writing several stories for the character Rick Random.
His first short story, “Rock Diver”, was published in the February 1951 issue of Worlds Beyond, edited by Damon Knight; the magazine had previously published his illustrations. While in New York, he socialized at the Hydra Club, an organization of New York’s science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov. In the early 1950s, the Hydra Club included such luminaries as Alfred Bester, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Avram Davidson, Judith Merril, and Theodore Sturgeon.
Harrison has become much better known for his later writing, particularly for his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Rat series and his novel Bill the Galactic Hero—which satirized Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers. Christopoher Priest wrote:
His most popular and best-known work is contained in fast-moving parodies, homages or even straight reconstructions of traditional space-opera adventures. He wrote several named series of these: notably the Deathworld series (three titles, starting in 1960), the Stainless Steel Rat books (12 titles, from 1961), and the sequence of books about Bill, the Galactic Hero (seven titles, from 1965). These books all present interesting contradictions: while being exactly what they might superficially seem to be, unpretentious action novels with a strong streak of humour, they are also satirical, knowing, subversive, unapologetically anti-military, anti-authority and anti-violence. Harrison wrote such novels in the idiom of the politically conservative hack writer, but in reality he had a liberal conscience and a sharp awareness of the lack of literary values in so much of the SF he was parodying.
Adi Robertson agreed: “His books toed the line between science fiction adventure, humor, and satire, often with a strong anti-military bent informed by his time in the US Army Air Corps.”
During the 1950s and 1960s, he was the main writer of the Flash Gordon newspaper strip. One of his Flash Gordon scripts was serialized in Comics Revue magazine. Harrison drew sketches to help the artist be more scientifically accurate, which the artist largely ignored.
For a time Harrison was closely associated with Brian Aldiss. They collaborated on a series of anthology projects and did much in the 1970s to raise the standards of criticism in the field, including institution of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Priest wrote, “In 1965 Harrison and Aldiss published the first issue (of two) of the world’s first serious journal of SF criticism, SF Horizons. Together they edited many anthologies of short stories, each one illustrating the major themes of SF, and although not intended as critical apparatus the books were a way of delineating the unique material of the fantastic. As committed internationalists, the two men created World SF, an organisation of professionals intended to encourage and enhance the writing of non-anglophone SF In particular, the two edited nine volumes of The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series as well as three volumes of the Decade series, collecting science fiction of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s respectively.
In 1990, Harrison was the professional Guest of Honor at ConFiction, the 48th World SF Convention, in The Hague, Netherlands, together with Joe Haldeman and Wolfgang Jeschke.
Harrison was a writer of fairly liberal worldview. Harrison’s work often hinges around the contrast between the thinking man and the man of force, although the “Thinking Man” often needs ultimately to employ force himself.
Harrison did not win a major genre award for any specific work of fiction. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Harrison in 2004, and the Science