Bill, the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure! [Paperback]

Harry Harrison (Author), David Harris (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bill, the Galactic Hero | Publication Date: September 1992

Recruited by Captain Kadaffi (a.k.a., Captain Cadaver) for a suicide mission to the planet Eyerack, Bill, a big, strong, and completely brainwashed galactic hero must complete the mission or die trying.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380756676
• ISBN-13: 978-0380756674
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,405,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars funny stuff on paper., October 23, 2001

By 

Alistair Archibald (Belfast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bill, the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure! (Paperback)

Harry Harrison has an ingenius talent when it comes to creating fundamentally likeable,amusing characters and scenarios.Similar to sleeeepery jeeeeem digriz(anti-hero of the stainless steel rat series)Bill is stuck in the TROOPERS and all his adventures revolve around trying to get out and back to his sepia-toned robomule.The final adventure is more topical than previous novels but is firmly rooted in the soil of mirth with running gags,polevaulting gags and gags on rocket powered rollerblades(both left footed,chuckle chuckle chuckle)ah bejesus,this was my 'bath book' for ages,like a fine wine in nearly no way at all except its funnier.buy this for a much needed laugh at the military mind.

1.0 out of 5 stars Harrison Doesn't Know When to Stop, December 11, 2001

By 

B. Walsh (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bill, the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure! (Paperback)

The first "Bill" book was good. Not great, but decent, funny and satirically sharp. The rest of the series is barely-mitigated garbage. By this point, he's clearly not even writing the stuff at all, as one "co-author" after another takes over. Sadly, it's difficult to see how it would be any better if he had. Harrison can write great, lively, funny, inventive sci-fi: the early "Rat" books, "Deathworld". "Deathworld" works so well because he wrote three short books, one short story and then stopped (or converted its protagonist into the Rat, one could argue). But the Rat books decay into a muddle when it becomes clear that Harrison just thrives on the stock elements of the stories; the capers, gadgets and booze. Continuity and development can go hang. Who cares if English was the native language of Jim diGriz's homeworld in some books but has to learn it in others? Who cares that the man who has dealt with money in every form from coin to electronic transfer can suddenly be confused by a wallet and its contents? Stick with the ride and it'll all work out OK. The Rat character and the main ingredients are good enough. After a while, though, the contempt that Harrison exudes for his audience starts to get wearing. If Harrison doesn't care enough to keep consistent about basic details of his major character's history, why should we care about him at all?

But with "Bill", we reach this point after Book 1. The character is not as accessible, his lot in life not as enjoyable to read about, the reversals he suffers tiresome. Add in some often appallingly bad attempts at genre parody (the Cyberpunk and Orson Scott Card efforts in one of this series, in particular, were cringe-makingly horrible) and it's no surprise that in every used SF bookstore I've seen, a chunk of the Harry Harrison shelfspace is taken by barely-touched copies of "Bill the Galactic Hero And Something Or Other" by Harry Harrison And Some Guy. I've read them all once and will never touch any of them again. Harrison clearly doesn't care about Bill, and nor do I.

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, satiric look at the Gulf War through the eyes of Bill, September 29, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Bill, the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure! (Paperback)

Harris and Harrison have taken their Galactic Hero into the middle of a war for control of vital neutron mines. This book takes Bill back to satiric vision created by Harrison in the original book, Bill the Galatic Hero. Funny, occasionally moving, with an undercurrent of contemporary commentary on the nature of war--and people who like their jokes well-aged.