I have been reading science fiction downloaded to the Kindle for the pure purpose of forgetting my troubles. The stainless steel rat stories adequately fill this purpose. Jim DiGriz is forever in trouble, but rarely troubled by his problems, always thinking of the next scam. In this volume is the story of his early years, his mentor "The Bishop", and the story of his first two adventures. He is constantly being rescued by circumstance and the galactic league government. Harry Harrison has a colorful imagination, writes a fast-paced plot, but occasionally intrudes his libertarian philosophy. ( )

One of my happier memories of academic life is of preparing for the AP English exam. The exam had an essay question that could be answered using "any important or notable book written in English." It was one of the rare times that students at my high school had been asked about their opinion or to use their judgement. My teacher explained that any of the books we had been assigned over the course of the year qualified as "notable" but that we were free to choose any book whose merit we were willing to defend. We were all giddy at the prospect of writing on a book we hadn't been forced to read.

Since the question related to satire one of my friends announced that he was going to write on a book by Harry Harrison called "Bill, The Galactic Hero." [book: Bill, the Galactic Hero] It was, he told me, a brilliant book about violence, lies, and human insanity. Harrison had also written some others, he went on to say, but none were anywhere near as good.

The Stainless Steel Rat stories comprise Harrison's other, not as good, books. None of them qualifies as either notable or important, but when I read them I liked them immediately. The prose is bad, indistinguishable from that found in the pulp magazines and "boy's best adventure series" books that have cast a shadow over sci-fi from its inception, but the main character, the Rat himself, is tailor-made for his outcast, awkward, and generally unhappy audience. He's a thief in a sanitized future when crime is all but impossible, criminals having been run out of town by perfected surveillance and security technologies. Like his lonely teenaged male audience he has been squeezed by society to the edge of the room and then further out into the wainscoting. The Rat's world has become cold, hostile and horrifically clean. A stainless steel world, he reasons, requires a stainless steel rat, and thus adapted he undertakes the sort of adventures that remind you that the world may be divided into black hats and white hats but usually such symbolic headwear is little more than a fashion statement. The Rat's the kind of predictably drawn but vaguely likable anti-hero that Moorcock pioneered and Donaldson gave substance to. These aren't great literature, but if you remember what it was like to fight your way around and through the margins of high school society, and you don't insist on taking them too seriously, you may get a kick out of the Rat. ( )

I can't believe no one has reviewed these books yet.

This trilogy (in ereader form) introduced me to the Stainless Steel Rat series of books among other works of Harry Harrison. While technically an action adventure novel, the author tells more than a story with these characters. There's social commentary, political theory, philosophy, future history and more. Harrison has become one of my favorite scifi authors.

For anyone who enjoys these books, they would probably enjoy the other SSR novels and "Planet of the Damned" by Harry Harrison.