Harry Harrison (writer)

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Harry Harrison (writer) bigraphy, stories - American science fiction writer

Harry Harrison (writer) : biography

March 12, 1925 – August 15, 2012

Harry Harrison Henry Maxwell Dempsey Make Room! Make Room! Soylent Green

Aldiss called him "a constant peer and great family friend". His friend Michael Carroll said, "Imagine Pirates of the Caribbean or Raiders of the Lost Ark, and picture them as science-fiction novels. They’re rip-roaring adventures, but they’re stories with a lot of heart." Novelist Christopher Priest wrote in an obituary,

On learning of his death, Harlan Ellison said, "It’s a day without stars in it."

Career

Before becoming an editor and a 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. He used house pen names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines, and published other fiction under the pen names of Felix Boyd and Hank Dempsey (see Personal Life below). Harrison was ghost-writer of Vendetta for the Saint, one of the long-running series of novels featuring The Saint created by Leslie Charteris. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, writing several stories for the "Rick Random" character.

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, whose work he would parody in Bill, the Galactic Hero and its sequels. 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 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. Priest wrote:

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.

Not all of Harrison’s writing was comic, though. He wrote many stories on serious themes, of which by far the best known is the novel about overpopulation and consumption of the world’s resources Make Room! Make Room! which was used as a basis for the science fiction film Soylent Green (though the film changed the plot and theme).

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.