Deathworld by Harry Harrison

DeathWorld by Harry Harrison

I love science fiction movies and TV series from the highest quality to the lowest b Movie exploitation ones with terrible special effects. However, Science Fiction Literature is something I have never really got into. Apart from Novelisations, I have read very few. I respect writers like Asimov, Clarke, and Aldiss, but I could never really get any joy out of them. Sometimes I thought I must be missing out on something as I just didn’t get the appeal. During my time as a Bookseller at Waterstones running the sci fi section, I challenged myself to read some more modern ones. Becky Chambers The Long way to a small angry planet was one of the standouts for sure. Gestapo Mars by Victor Gischler and Behind The Throne by K B Wagers were others I enjoyed very much. However, apart from some classic sci-fi like Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and short stories from the likes of Harlan Ellison, it certainly was not a genre I gravitated to.

I had read some of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat thanks to the adaptation in 2000ad.

I enjoyed it. Several years later I came across a couple of volumes. I enjoyed them and loved the humour. However, they did not leave me wanting any more so never pursued the rest of the series. Harrison also wrote the classic sci-fi novel Make Room! Make Room! Which was adapted into the movie Soylent Green

The late Christopher Priest said of Harrison:”Harrison was an extremely popular figure in the SF world, renowned for being amiable, outspoken and endlessly amusing. His quickfire, machine-gun delivery of words was a delight to hear, and a reward to unravel: he was funny and self-aware, he enjoyed reporting the follies of others, he distrusted generals, prime ministers and tax officials with sardonic and cruel wit, and above all he made plain his acute intelligence and astonishing range of moral, ethical and literary sensibilities”

Although a prolific and popular sci fi author, he never won any major awards during his lifetime but he was a cult hero in Russia .

I didn’t know anything about Deathworld when I came across them in a second-hand bookshop. Of course, I had to buy them because of the title. They had been sitting on my shelves for a while before I took the plunge. I’d decided to try a couple more modern sci-fi novels and gave up, to be honest. These had me intrigued by the title and synopsis so took the plunge, and boy am I glad I did!

Deathworld was originally serialized in astounding science fiction, then in Analog magazine in the sixties. The collected story was Harrison's first published novel. The plot is based around its central character, Jason dinAlt a professional gambler with psi abilities, who is hired to run a stake up into the billions by some colonists of the Planet Pyrrus. After success, he opts to return to the planet with the colonists, fascinated by what they have told him about it. However, Pyrrus is the most hostile world in the universe, with every life form bent on the extermination of the colonists, even the plant life. The colonists have almost superhuman strength due to the planet’s hostile environment.

What unfolds is a tale of all-out action, alien horror, nature attacks, betrayal, and conspiracies. What a rip-roaring ride it was! A brilliant, old-school pulp sci-fi adventure with some great humour. Considering when it was written, it does not feel as dated as some of these early sci-fi tales can be. It’s also a bit of a clunky anti-war novel. The main protagonist Jason Dinalt is a really likable rogue and has a great cast of characters around him. It’s almost an origin team story as well, as the books continue up to volume 7, the last few written in conjunction with the Russian authors Ant Skalandis and Mikhail Akhmanov but, strangely, never published in English. I have the three first volumes and will certainly be reading the continuing adventures.

Another great thing about this book, it’s a short punchy read. If you want inward-looking sci-fi about the meaning of the universe, this is not for you. It’s a quick, entertaining sci-fi romp, punching to the end. Wonderful!

You can find the novels pretty cheaply, but not available on the Kindle. However, there is a really good audio version free on Libravox.