I’ve been a sci-fi addict for many a year now and one of my favourite authors was Harry Harrison.
He created a character called Slippery Jim DiGriz, a criminal for the future, who, to stay ahead of the authorities in a concrete society, needed to look for the nooks and crannies that an ordinary rat could not find, but a stainless steel rat could.
For a background check out this wikipedia entry.
The reason I bring this up is that my copy of the Stainless Steel Rat, that I bought in 1977 and which I’ve been dipping into from time to time is falling apart and to treat myself I bought a Kindle Paperwhite and the 4 books in the Stainless Steel Rat series that I already owned in paperback to bring my “book” reading into the 21st century at last! :).
I’ve always felt that the books would have made a great movie and have been checking for a possible movie being released from time to time, but the owners of the film rights have been faffing about for over 27 years now and still no film is being made, although Jan DeBont (of Twister and Speed fame) has had his name linked to a possible movie over the past few years. I’d just like to see it happen and if I can start a thread going and get the Google bots to do their job, maybe it might happen. It certainly deserves to.
Regardless of this I would recommend The Stainless Steel Rat books as a good read for sci-fi fans who enjoy a good yarn with gadgets and a witty character in it. Harry Harrison sadly passed away last year at the age of 87 but his legacy in the form of his books will live on and it is a shame that he didn’t get to see a Stainless Steel Rat movie made.
The only Wyndham book I read was The Midwich Cuckoos. Scarily good book and the early scifi film was a pretty good adaptation too. My mum used to be a librarian and so we used to have the pick of the books that were taken off the shelves and offered for sale, although we never paid for them. Sad to say that they all had to go, but at least the charity shops benefitted from them.
If you haven’t read any of them, even though it sounds daft, its worth starting with the last book, Stormbringer. Great finale to the series and you can always go back and pick up the back story later on.