Showing results by author "Harry Harrison"

DiGriz is caught during one of his crimes and recruited into the Special Corps. Boring, routine desk work during his probationary period results in his discovering that someone is building a battleship, thinly disguised as an industrial vessel. In the peaceful League no one has battleships anymore, so the builder of this one would be unstoppable. DiGriz' hunt for the guilty becomes a personal battle between himself and the beautiful but deadly Angelina, who his planning a coup on one of the feudal worlds.

DiGriz and Angelina are happily married and expecting the birth of their sons. The planet Cliaand is waging interstellar war, and against the odds, its Grey Men are invading and taking over planet after planet. The Rat is sent to Cliaand to start a one-man guerrilla campaign to put a stop to the plans of the planet's leader, Kraj. He is aided by the Amazons, a force of liberated freedom fighters, and eventually by his wife who arrives to help him win the war and keep him out of the arms of the Amazons.

Sixty-five million years ago, a disastrous cataclysm eliminated three quarters of all life on Earth. Overnight, the age of dinosaurs ended. The age of mammals had begun. But what if history had happened differently? What if the reptiles had survived to evolve into intelligent life? In West of Eden, best-selling author Harry Harrison has created a rich, dramatic saga of a world where the descendants of the dinosaurs struggled with a clan of humans in a battle for survival.

Jim was left in the custody of the League Navy, this story opens with him escaping from his prison cell on the League base on Steren-Gwandra, where he is awaiting deportation back to his home world. He has discovered that Bibs, a crew girl from Captain Garth's ship, is also a prisoner. Jim holds Garth responsible for the Bishop's death, and plans to hunt him down, with Bibs' help. Garth is really the crazed Captain Zennor, head of an army which continually defies League peace treaties, and now plans to invade and conquer the planet Chojecki.

Jim and Angelina are on holiday on the paradise planet Lussuoso, where the very, very rich can avail themselves of rejuvenating treatments and become young again. Just when boredom seems about to set in, Jim learns that Angelina has disappeared, seemingly the victim of a religious scam. Evil genius Justin Slakey has a machine that allows him to travel between universes. He uses it to prey on religious believers, tricking them out of their money and then using them as slaves in his coal mines. Aided by his twin sons, James and Bolivar, Slippery Jim descends to a planet that seems to be a real-life version of Hell....

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James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” diGriz, Special Corps agent, master con man, and interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog on the planet Moolaplenty when a long-lost cousin and a shipful of swine arrive to drain his bank account and send him, and his lovely wife, Angelina, wandering the stars on the wildest journey since Gulliver’s Travels.

Jan Kulozik was one of Earth's privileged elite. A brilliant young electronics engineer, he enjoyed all the blessings of a twenty-third-century civilization that survived global collapse and conquered the starts, unaware of the millions who slaved or starved to maintain his way of life. Then Jan met Sara, a beautiful agent of the rebel underground dedicated to smashing Earth's rigid caste system. Through her he discovered the truth behind the lies he'd been taught.

"The Ethical Engineer" (1963) is a science fiction novel by Harry Harrison. Excerpt: The ship touched down and the flaring rockets died. There was only the click of cooling metal from the ship: no one emerged, nor did any of the Pyrrans seem interested enough in the newcomer to approach it. That must mean that no one had any business with it, and, of course, no curiosity either, for this along with imagination was in very short supply on the war-torn planet. Since no one else was making any moves, Jason went forward to investigate for himself.

In a New York City groaning under the burden of 35 million inhabitants, detective Andy Rusch is engaged in a desperate and lonely hunt for a killer everyone has forgotten. For even in a world such as this, a policeman can find himself utterly alone.

"The Misplaced Battleship" is a sci-fi short story by author Harry Harrison, published in 1960. James Bolivar DiGriz, alias "Slippery Jim" and "The Stainless Steel Rat", is a fictional character and the protagonist of a series of comic science fiction novels by the same author. "Slippery Jim" is the listener's wonderfully sly, funny and resourceful hero in this entertaining and amusing work; where he has to investigate and - hopefully! - solve the case of a dangerous battleship floating around unaccounted for.

The villainous He has travelled back in time to mankind's distant past on the legendary planet Earth (or 'Dirt') of 1984, where he is altering events so that people who opposed him in the Rat's present cease to exist, Angelina amongst them. Using the Helix, a time-travel device invented by the Special Corps' Professor Coypu, diGriz travels to 1984 America, and then to Napoleonic France where tanks and aircraft are helping bring about Napoleon's victory.

This time the Special Corps has given the Rat a daring assignment: liberate a backward tourist planet from the clutches of an aging dictator. With his lovely but lethal wife, Angelina, and his two stalwart sons, James and Bolivar, diGriz pits ballots against bullets in the fight for freedom. He's vowed to restore truth, justice, and democracy to the world of Paraiso-Aqui, even if he has to lie, cheat, and steal to do it!

Slippery Jim is here a brash 17-year-old who has left his parents' porcuswine farm, planning to embark on a life of crime. The book opens with Jim bungling a bank job so that he can be arrested and sent to prison, where he plans to learn the art of being a master criminal. Deciding that the Bishop should be his mentor, Jim sets about proving himself worthy of the master's attention.

Deathworld centers on Jason dinAlt, a professional gambler who uses his somewhat erratic psionic abilities to tip the odds in his favor. He is challenged by a man named Kerk Pyrrus (who turns out to be the ambassador from the planet Pyrrus) to turn a large amount of money into an immense sum by gambling at a government-run casino. He succeeds and survives the planetary government's desperate efforts to steal back the money.

A craftsman, visionary, and warrior, Shef has risen from slavery to become king of a mighty Viking nation. But his growing kingdom menaces all of Europe, and he has made many powerful enemies. Chief among his enemies are the Knights of the Lance, a fanatical order of soldiers sworn to bring Shef down, no matter what the cost.

On the planet Pyrrus, human colonists have fought a centuries-old war with the native life forms. These life forms adapt to human tactics and technology, evolving new species so rapidly that natives returning from even brief trips off planet must be carried in protective armor canisters from their ship to the safe buildings, where they will learn of the latest deadly threats.

Things aren't going well for Slippery Jim diGriz. First there was the robbery of the Mint on Paskönjak that went terribly wrong, and then that little matter of a death penalty. And last but not least, there's the deal Slippery Jim cuts with the authorities, which, on reflection, doesn't look much better than slow death. In exchange for his life, Slippery Jim must retrieve a missing alien artifact from the planet Liokukae - a dumping ground for the Galactic League's misfits, murderers, maniacs, and the incurably obnoxious.

Bill should know that you never complain in the Troopers. But when his new foot looks like it's turning into something green, scaly, and abundantly clawed, a visit to the medics would seem to be reasonable. But before he can say "Quintiform computer error", he seems to have got himself volunteered again, this time for a suicide mission on Tsuris - the planet nobody ever comes back from.

Bill - the perfect Starship Trooper: big, brawny, and brainwashed. Possessor of two right arms (impressive when it comes to saluting) and a foot that is threatening to turn into something more suited to being an umbrella stand than anything that could be squeezed into a size 11 sneaker.