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Consider Harry Harrison.
All the way from the sombre, frightening scenario of Make Room, Make Room to the brilliant farce of Bill, The Galactic Hero. This is Harry Harrison—a skilful, talented writer who has explored most of the major highways of SF and who has usually managed to illuminate them in strange and exciting ways by virtue of the sheer artistry he has applied to his vision.
All of which makes his latest novel, Planet of No Return, all the more disappointing. I can only recommend that you read this one with your eyes shut. That way you might get through to the end without throwing up. If it wasn’t for the name Harry Harrison on the cover, I would swear from the evidence of the text that this was a book written by a complete beginner, totally unskilled in the art and craft of writing. All the mistakes are here. Characters ask each other dumb questions to which they already know the answers, simply to provide an excuse for a lecture to bring the reader up to date on plot points. The lecture usually begins with some such phrase as, “As I am sure you remember…” and then goes on to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before. There is no excuse for this. The best way to explain a plot point is to dramatise, not lecture about it. But Harrison does even worse. Having dramatised some of his plot points (in Chapter One, Hartig is killed by an alien war machine) he then has his characters recapitulate what we have already seen. In Chapter Four, Brion Brandd and Lea describe Hartig’s death to Carver (“Do you remember how Hartig died?”). Presumably Harrison was paid by the word, and this way he got more words without having to think too hard about finding new ones.
The plot is routine. Selm-II is covered in alien war machines, robots fighting each other and ruthlessly exterminating anything that gets in the way, like Hartig in Chapter One. Brion Brandd and Lea must discover the reason for the fighting robots and bring the war to an end.
So far, so banal. And the banality continues. There are no surprises here, no clever plot twists. All is routine space opera that could have been (and often was) published in Amazing Stories in 1930. SF has grown up since then. Today it should be more mature and sophisticated.
The whole book is packaged together with appalling black and white illustrations by someone called Rick DeMarco. The pictures consist mostly of bulging muscles (Brion Brandd), big tits (Lea) and lumps of metal (alien war machines). The general level of artistic skill is about on par with Harrison’s lumpy prose, and they complement each other well. Which says a lot about both of them.
Harrison’s earlier work seems to be undergoing a resurgence of popularity at the moment. Tor Books are republishing a lot of stuff. And that means that if you choose carefully, it is possible to pick up books from the period when Harrison was writing with both hands on the typewriter and was firmly in control of what he was doing. For instance…
How do you get from England to the American Colonies? You could go by aeroplane, but aeroplanes are very slow because of their coal powered engines. We have all complained of this at one time or another.
No, the best way to travel to the American Colonies is to take a train through the transatlantic tunnel. It is a fast and comfortable journey—and it is positively the only way for a gentleman to travel.
But, dear reader, when you travel through this marvel of modern engineering, spare a though for the great men who built this most sophisticated of railway systems. Ask yourself just how this eighth wonder of the world came into being. Who were those mightily thewed colossi who braved the very worst that Nature (or the conspiracies of mankind) could bring to bear against them and won through against incalculable odds to build—the Transatlantic Tunnel?
Maybe, gentle reader, you could while away the hours of your journey with an improving book. A suitable one being, perhaps, the biography of the men who laboured so mightily on the tunnel. Such a book is now readily available to you. From the pen of Mr H. Harrison (gent.) comes A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! It shows just how all the obstacles were met—and how they were overcome. Within the pages of this work, all those heroes whose names are now household words, come stirringly alive. Here is Captain “Gus” Washington, the direct descendent of the traitor George Washington who was shot, you will recall, by our gallant armies in the Colonies when the abortive revolution of which he was the leader, failed. Here also is Sir Isambard Brassey-Brunel, one of the greatest engineers of the age, and his beautiful daughter Iris, whom Captain Washington loved.
This is a noble tale. A tale of bravery and dedication to an ideal—the Transatlantic Tunnel itself. Mr Harrison’s prose warmly recaptures those pioneering days. He has performed his biographical function perfectly. Those people who previously were mere names in our history books are shown by Mr Harrison to have been real flesh and blood with real human drives and ambitions. So is history brought home to us.
Planet of No Return by Harry Harrison. Tor Science Fiction $4.10.
A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison. Tor Science Fiction $4.10.
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