Customer Reviews

The Stainless Steel Rat Returns

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm going to have to spend this comment taking apart the idiot and dullard of a professional book reviewer at Publisher's Weekly who tried unfairly to paint Harrison as a racist in his public review. It seems to be removed here But I'll post here anyway as I did at Barnes and Noble.
This is a bit spoilerish, just a warning...............

As he hasn't read the series much less Harrison's background from WWII where he worked with black soldiers as a Sgt. while their white jackass Officers were always giving them crap and trying to get them written up or jailed. Harrison wrote a long time ago about his experience of this, and how it was about time the day black soldiers got their equal rights and were desegregated in the military back in the late 40s when he was stationed in the south at a training base. Harrison has never been a racist.
The Reviewer quotes the one sentence where jim remarks:
> Jim (himself quite pink) declares that the different skin colors "should
> have been bred out centuries ago."

Firstly Jim is not pink. His race is never mentioned in the books, though he is generally portrayed as a white guy by artists on some covers and the comic book by creative license alone. Harrison (and he has said this before himself) always tried to keep race specifically vague for the main characters in his Rat books so that any reader identifies with them.
Jim mentioned that racial differences on the same planet and same continent were odd to him BECAUSE in his world (this series) humans had colonized the galaxy thousands of years ago. With an end to racial bigotry in THEIR modern social culture anyone would naturally be likely to marry anyone else regardless of race, so after thousands of years of mixed breeding everyone is just a standard light brown color- why this color? It was predicted by scientists back in the 80s that that was what people would look like if all the races mixed out of existence. The result would be sort of brown with slightly asian eyes. Harrison went with this hypothesis, he WASN'T saying that Jim is this certain color so it is the best some how.

Secondly, if you have read any number of Harrison's books, you'll know he always paints country folk as being ignorant bumpkins. He seems to think this is funny, I don't know...
Same with those on planets that lost their technology. They are always ignorant dullards in need of schooling and galactic contact.

Except for the Grey Men they faced in the third book. The inhabitance of a lost forgotten iceplanet had evolved separate from the rest of the human race, were very strong and hyper intelligent to the point of telepathy. He only beat their scheme to subvert the normal humans (who they resented for forgetting about them while they suffered in their cold mining colony) by a bit of trickery and misdirection playing on their nihilistic paranoia.

The reviewer also writes:
> the green-skinned, shiftless, slow-witted majority oppresses the
> smarter, slower-breeding, pink-skinned minority

I didn't see the greens being any more shiftless than the LIGHT BROWN humans, or any more slow witted than the shipwrecked humans who were also savage bumpkins. Again its like the reviewer is trying here to compare this story to black-white prejudice and accuse Harrison of being an earth-race bigot.

The greens, being a mutated species had a non-human hive like caste system where the majority were like drones and didn't need to be bread to be smart, they were bred to do menial labor and could be replaced easily. The minority in the greens were bred to lead and so had higher intelligence bred into them. This was a self inflicted culture which had nothing to do with the normal humans. There was no use of comparison.

When Jim landed the smart leader greens colored themselves different human colors to be most pleasing to who ever they might be talking to. They knew of the different colors humans might come in, because different groups of humans had landed there long ago before people fully integrated.
And the remaining normal humans all interbred giving the "nice healthy brown" look that Jim saw on the real humans that would be normal in Jim's homogenized universe.

Too bad many real humans these days appear no smarter than the 'green mutant majority', of whom the writer for the publishers weekly review is obviously a member, so maybe Harrison really should have written this back in the 60s as the reviewer suggested, before the rise of the cult of the reactionary and the dumbing down of the American people started.

I don't know where all the 5-star reviews have come from, because I'm having a hard time believing them. Harrison has taken everything good about the Stainless Steel Rat and left it out of this novel. Jim DiGriz is a con man, but there are no cons. He's also know for his fantastic robberies, but this book had none. He works for the Special Corps, saving the universe, but not here. Everything that's special about The Stainless Steel Rat is missing.

When I found out there was a new novel in the series, I was really excited. But reading it was a disappointment. The plot does not require Slippery Jim DiGriz -- it could have been any normal person facing difficulties in a future world. Harrison has let us down in this one.

I finished this book last night after a 5 day reading binge. The rat is back and he's wittier than ever. I laughed out loud constantly in the first few chapters, and was glued to the book after that. I would definitely start out with at least a few of the older stainless-steel-rat books first then read this one. Thank you Harry Harrison! This book is highly recommended.

I am a fan of Harry Harrison. I've read all of the Stainless Steel Rat books and at least half of his other books. I approached this book with great anticipation. It was at the very top of my Christmas list. Unfortunately, like the toy that looks so great on TV that you endlessly beg your parents for, the reality was disappointing.

When The Stainless Steel Rat is at its best, Slippery Jim DiGriz comes up with a creative way to turn his enemies' strengths against them. We've seen Jim win planetary elections, stop alien invasions, narrowly escape from dire situations, and capture some very smart, elusive crooks. Luck may occasionally intervene to help him along, but it's mostly his creativity that saves the day.

In The Stainless Steel Rat Returns, the same overly-confident, hard-drinking, wise-cracking Jim DiGriz is there, but when his back's up against the wall, he gets the perfect solution delivered to him on a shining silver platter. All he has to do is go through the motions... which might be what Harrison did to write this book.

For example (minor spoiler alert!), at one point in the book they "bloat" (jump) the spaceship to get away from bad guys and have no idea where they'll end up. The captain informs Jim that they have no fuel. He can collect more, but it will take three months. They don't have the air, water, or food for that long. This becomes a non-issue when they look out the window and see two planets. One has high gravity (making it a perfect place to scoop up gravitons, or fuel). The other has a breathable atmosphere, a livable (if warm) temperature, and a nice safe place to land. Oh, and it turns out a plant that looked like grass is actually a potato-like tuber.

Instead of a desperate battle for survival, Jim and company find themselves on the beach eating potatoes and working on their tans. When it's time to pick up the graviton collector, cousin Elmo introduces Jim to three passengers whose hobbies are extreme weightlifting and martial arts.

I enjoyed this book the same way you enjoy a visit from an old friend you haven't seen in a while, but I found it as disappointing as learning that the friend only dropped by to borrow money.

Unfortunately for many of those who have read previous SSR novels and those who haven't this title is a let down.

What I like best about the SSR series is the wit, novelty, and escapist thrill of the adventures. After finishing one adventure I wanted to read about the next one. While the Rat seems to always have Teflon attached to him (hence the nickname "Slippery Jim,") one still had the sense he could get himself in trouble. Not so, here. Our hero doesn't encounter any opponent or situation that he doesn't easily conquer.

Alas, in The SSR Returns, we seem to move from point A to point B to point C as if the author is just checking off a list of "go here, save day" and repeat. The SSR really doesn't want to be on this mission and neither do the readers. The SSR Returns starts with our hero being retired. I kind of wish he would have stayed that way.

Angelina, in name, tags along for the adventure. Her previous history is never brought up and you wouldn't think of her as more than a minor sidekick to the Rat. As for the sons, only one is ever mentioned, and that is as a plot device to transfer funds to his dad.

I read that someone thought that Harrison must be racist as he brings up the color of a different race in this novel. If you read about the author you will find this is not the case. One of the premises in the SSR series is that mankind has gotten along so well for so long that the human race has indeed become one big melting pot and that the color of a human's skin is pretty much the same around the universe. While never mentioned in the novels Harrison's take is that one's skin color probably is closer to an Asian than anyone else.

The Times Literary supplement once wrote "The Rat can hold his head high amongst the most elevated superhero company- Bulldog Drummond, James Bond and Flash Gordon included." I only wish that was still true today.

ahhh...the Stainless Steel Rat, Slippery Jim DiGriz, and all his many adventures...I read and loved em all.

Golly I was sure looking forward to this new adventure.
(Ugh, what happened, Harry H.?)

I was so disappointed, bored, after barely 1/4th into the book, couldn't bring myself to even speedskim the rest. sad.

I have the utmost respect for Mr Harrison, and while I love this character, it was not one of the better ones.

Think The Sting..Think Leverage...Think It Takes A Thief and wrap it all together with a science fiction bow and you have the Stainless Steel Rat.

James Bolivar DiGriz, alias "Slippery Jim" and "The Stainless Steel Rat" is a con man with a heart of gold. He is an honest crook who thrills for the con..until he gets caught. He now works for the special corps, still being a master con man for space justice.

The Rat has been around in book form for years. To be honest, since 1961. Those great folks at Brilliance audio has started to audio-tize the Rat's novels. I just hope they do all twelve novels.

Narrator Phil Gigante is a wonder. He narrates Harrison's first person narrative with a slickness, just like Slippery Jim. He makes this novels and the others in this series a lot fun.

So steal this..er, buy this audio as soon as possible and savor the jpys of the con

Bennet Pomerantz Audioworld

Classic Stainless Steel Rat, with a nod to another of Harrison's books, "Bill the Galactic Hero", making extensive use of the 'Bloater Drive' for interstellar travel. If you're familiar with the series the book is great, if you haven't read any of the series previously, you'll want to start with an earlier book, inasmuch as there are references to people and events (Inskopp primarily) that make sense only in context of the other books.

I didnt love it. I didnt hate it. And honestly I probably wont remember it. It felt like an aimless wander through the Rats universe where the characters were a faded version of themselves. And the end seemed disjointed like he was in a hurry to finish. This wont diminish my love of the series but it was just... meh. Side note: apostrophes are too much trouble on the Kindle keyboard.