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How powerful the Rat?
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William December Starr
Jul 30, 2015, 8:27:47 PM7/30/15
to
Back in June I got into a minor and friendly disagreement with Sea
Wasp (Ryk) about how much damage Harry Harrison's Slippery Jim
DiGriz, a/k/a the Stainless Steel Rat, could have done to the
totalitarian planetary government in Harrison's non-DiGriz "To the
Stars" trilogy.
If you can stand to use Google Groups, the short (7 posts) thread is
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/jkqRXbFQNis .
If you can't, the dispute basically summarizes like this:
Ryk, in his original post:
> This was a powerfully-written trilogy from start to finish.
> Jan has many of the traits of a typical Harrison hero,
> including a quick tongue and cynical wit, but they are less
> emphasized here, because Jan -- unlike Slippery Jim DiGriz or
> even Jason DinAlt of the Deathworld series -- is not a man
> who chose to take on the universe on his terms, but rather a
> man whose circumstances forced him into the role of
> revolutionary and hero. Jan is not a passive force -- he
> tries his best to take control of events -- but he is not
> able to redirect the course of destiny on his own, unlike
> some of Harrison's more larger-than-life characters; really,
> God help EarthGov if they'd had to deal with James DiGriz,
> this wouldn't even have been a full-length novel.
Me:
> I don't know. Jim's good, but he's no V. (From the Alan Moore
> book, not the movie of the same name that I've never seen.)
Ryk:
> He's taken down world dictators before, escaped impossible
> prisons, evaded detection in omnipresent security. He's a superman
> in multiple ways. He also uses far more advanced technology in
> many ways. Putting him in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
Me:
> Okay, I haven't read many of the Jim DiGriz stories after the
> first three (the original, "...Revenge" and "...Saves the World"),
> so I'm talking about the _real_ DiGriz, not whatever Harrison
> Supermanned him up to later.
Ryk:
> So am I. What he pulls off in those three books is insane. The
> later stuff goes full-on Mary Sue, but if you take seriously what
> he does, and what he survives, he's just an order of magnitude
> more dangerous than Kulozik or anyone in his world.
...and there it ended. It did motivate me though to reread those
first three S.S.Rat books (now numbers 4 through 6 in the timeline,
after Harrison much later went back and wrote some of DiGriz'
earlier adventures):
+ 4 The Stainless Steel Rat (1961)
+ 5 The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970)
+ 6 The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World (1972)
...which are usefully collected in the 1977 SFBC omnibus hardcover
THE ADVENTURES OF THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT. And now I can -- still
convivially, I emphasize -- respond to Ryk:
The middle one, _Revenge_, is the one that he's talking about. It's
DiGriz' (and his civilization's) first encounter with the Gray Men,
as somebody starts doing something thought impossible -- conducting
interstellar war and _winning_ rather than just bankrupting
themselves -- and Jim's given the assignment of investigating the
mess.
And... he's impressive, but not I think as good as Ryk remembers
him. He does start out, after spending several days getting the lay
of the land while living out the cover identity that the Special
Corps set up for him as a weapons-system demonstrator/salesman, by
escaping from and evading the world's totalitarian military regime's
saturated-surveillance system... but he does this by reasoning that
you can't have enough watchers to watch a whole planet (especially
if you're so institutionally paranoid that you also have people
assigned to watch the watchers) and therefore the surveillance will
be omnipresent only in a small fraction of the world, the parts that
the rulers consider especially important like the limited areas
where visitors from off-planet are allowed to stay and travel, and
all he has to do to get out from under it is ditch his escort and
then zip out of the Visitors' Zone and into the unmonitored boonies
faster than they can catch him.
Which he does, which is a nice feat but "evaded detection in
omnipresent security" is really an exaggeration. After that, he
spent some time collecting (a) food and water, (b) a self-propelled
excavator and (c) the electronic components needed to build a
powerful and highly directional radio transmitter, and then dug
himself a bunker in the desert, sent a coded message, climbed into
his hole, and hid there for eleven days waiting while the Corps did
its stuff, sending him a CARE package full of the tools and
equipment he'd requested, disguised as a small meteorite. So -- and
this is important -- he wasn't really working the mission _solo_.
He was alone but he had lots of external support.
Afterwards, he found a military officer on his last day of leave,
got him drunk, kidnapped him, used Corps-supplied equipment to make
himself look like the guy, and set out to infiltrate the military's
upcoming next planetary invasion. This worked for a while -- he had
to jump through some amazing hoops getting out of and back into a
military base that was on complete lockdown, but he did make it to
the target planet (which fell _very_ easily) as part of the
invasion, and by chance made contact with a highly competent local
military officer and convinced her that despite the uniform he was
wearing he was one of the good guys -- but then he found out that
while his idea about how to humanely long-term stash the guy he was
impersonating _had_ been a very good one, unfortunately he'd rolled
a one and by chance the guy had been found. Jim finds this out by
being captured and mind-tortured, leading to, yes, an escape from a
prison that was supposed to be inescapable. BUT: once he gets out
he's operating at well below 100% because of the horrors that they
wrote directly into his brain while they had him, and is quickly
recaptured:
I struggled a bit, but it did me no good. My heart
wasn't in it and I was close to exhaustion. Though I did
manage to catch my ex-friend Ortov a good one on the side
of the head with my torture box. His eyes crossed but he
didn't let go and by that time a small squad of gray men
were upon us, peeling him off and prodding me to my feet
with their rifle barrels. I prodded slowly. Sunk in
dark despair and limp with fatigue I was certainly in no
hurry.
In other words he is, as the saying goes, out of fuel,
airspeed, and ideas, and is likely doomed. He only wins the
story because at this point he's rescued by his wife, whom
he thought was light-years away[1].
-----------
*1: When they were both captured DiGriz had been giving the the
female military officer the details -- text and broadcast time,
direction and frequency -- of the coded "Hey guys, I'm on
_this_ planet now and here's the situation" message he wanted
beamed out to the Corps; luckily she (a) had a very good memory
and (b) wasn't in uniform and therefore got sent to an easily
escaped civilian detention camp. When the Corps had gotten the
message, Angelina had decided to get involved personally.
So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
series anyway.
-- wds
Wasp (Ryk) about how much damage Harry Harrison's Slippery Jim
DiGriz, a/k/a the Stainless Steel Rat, could have done to the
totalitarian planetary government in Harrison's non-DiGriz "To the
Stars" trilogy.
If you can stand to use Google Groups, the short (7 posts) thread is
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/jkqRXbFQNis .
If you can't, the dispute basically summarizes like this:
Ryk, in his original post:
> This was a powerfully-written trilogy from start to finish.
> Jan has many of the traits of a typical Harrison hero,
> including a quick tongue and cynical wit, but they are less
> emphasized here, because Jan -- unlike Slippery Jim DiGriz or
> even Jason DinAlt of the Deathworld series -- is not a man
> who chose to take on the universe on his terms, but rather a
> man whose circumstances forced him into the role of
> revolutionary and hero. Jan is not a passive force -- he
> tries his best to take control of events -- but he is not
> able to redirect the course of destiny on his own, unlike
> some of Harrison's more larger-than-life characters; really,
> God help EarthGov if they'd had to deal with James DiGriz,
> this wouldn't even have been a full-length novel.
Me:
> I don't know. Jim's good, but he's no V. (From the Alan Moore
> book, not the movie of the same name that I've never seen.)
Ryk:
> He's taken down world dictators before, escaped impossible
> prisons, evaded detection in omnipresent security. He's a superman
> in multiple ways. He also uses far more advanced technology in
> many ways. Putting him in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
Me:
> Okay, I haven't read many of the Jim DiGriz stories after the
> first three (the original, "...Revenge" and "...Saves the World"),
> so I'm talking about the _real_ DiGriz, not whatever Harrison
> Supermanned him up to later.
Ryk:
> So am I. What he pulls off in those three books is insane. The
> later stuff goes full-on Mary Sue, but if you take seriously what
> he does, and what he survives, he's just an order of magnitude
> more dangerous than Kulozik or anyone in his world.
...and there it ended. It did motivate me though to reread those
first three S.S.Rat books (now numbers 4 through 6 in the timeline,
after Harrison much later went back and wrote some of DiGriz'
earlier adventures):
+ 4 The Stainless Steel Rat (1961)
+ 5 The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970)
+ 6 The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World (1972)
...which are usefully collected in the 1977 SFBC omnibus hardcover
THE ADVENTURES OF THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT. And now I can -- still
convivially, I emphasize -- respond to Ryk:
The middle one, _Revenge_, is the one that he's talking about. It's
DiGriz' (and his civilization's) first encounter with the Gray Men,
as somebody starts doing something thought impossible -- conducting
interstellar war and _winning_ rather than just bankrupting
themselves -- and Jim's given the assignment of investigating the
mess.
And... he's impressive, but not I think as good as Ryk remembers
him. He does start out, after spending several days getting the lay
of the land while living out the cover identity that the Special
Corps set up for him as a weapons-system demonstrator/salesman, by
escaping from and evading the world's totalitarian military regime's
saturated-surveillance system... but he does this by reasoning that
you can't have enough watchers to watch a whole planet (especially
if you're so institutionally paranoid that you also have people
assigned to watch the watchers) and therefore the surveillance will
be omnipresent only in a small fraction of the world, the parts that
the rulers consider especially important like the limited areas
where visitors from off-planet are allowed to stay and travel, and
all he has to do to get out from under it is ditch his escort and
then zip out of the Visitors' Zone and into the unmonitored boonies
faster than they can catch him.
Which he does, which is a nice feat but "evaded detection in
omnipresent security" is really an exaggeration. After that, he
spent some time collecting (a) food and water, (b) a self-propelled
excavator and (c) the electronic components needed to build a
powerful and highly directional radio transmitter, and then dug
himself a bunker in the desert, sent a coded message, climbed into
his hole, and hid there for eleven days waiting while the Corps did
its stuff, sending him a CARE package full of the tools and
equipment he'd requested, disguised as a small meteorite. So -- and
this is important -- he wasn't really working the mission _solo_.
He was alone but he had lots of external support.
Afterwards, he found a military officer on his last day of leave,
got him drunk, kidnapped him, used Corps-supplied equipment to make
himself look like the guy, and set out to infiltrate the military's
upcoming next planetary invasion. This worked for a while -- he had
to jump through some amazing hoops getting out of and back into a
military base that was on complete lockdown, but he did make it to
the target planet (which fell _very_ easily) as part of the
invasion, and by chance made contact with a highly competent local
military officer and convinced her that despite the uniform he was
wearing he was one of the good guys -- but then he found out that
while his idea about how to humanely long-term stash the guy he was
impersonating _had_ been a very good one, unfortunately he'd rolled
a one and by chance the guy had been found. Jim finds this out by
being captured and mind-tortured, leading to, yes, an escape from a
prison that was supposed to be inescapable. BUT: once he gets out
he's operating at well below 100% because of the horrors that they
wrote directly into his brain while they had him, and is quickly
recaptured:
I struggled a bit, but it did me no good. My heart
wasn't in it and I was close to exhaustion. Though I did
manage to catch my ex-friend Ortov a good one on the side
of the head with my torture box. His eyes crossed but he
didn't let go and by that time a small squad of gray men
were upon us, peeling him off and prodding me to my feet
with their rifle barrels. I prodded slowly. Sunk in
dark despair and limp with fatigue I was certainly in no
hurry.
In other words he is, as the saying goes, out of fuel,
airspeed, and ideas, and is likely doomed. He only wins the
story because at this point he's rescued by his wife, whom
he thought was light-years away[1].
-----------
*1: When they were both captured DiGriz had been giving the the
female military officer the details -- text and broadcast time,
direction and frequency -- of the coded "Hey guys, I'm on
_this_ planet now and here's the situation" message he wanted
beamed out to the Corps; luckily she (a) had a very good memory
and (b) wasn't in uniform and therefore got sent to an easily
escaped civilian detention camp. When the Corps had gotten the
message, Angelina had decided to get involved personally.
So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
series anyway.
-- wds
Shawn Wilson
Aug 1, 2015, 6:28:56 PM8/1/15
to
On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
> So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
> one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
> machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
> series anyway.
For that you need Kim Kinnison, who takes down an entire galactic empire, solo.
> So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
> one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
> machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
> series anyway.
Alie...@gmail.com
Aug 2, 2015, 9:11:59 PM8/2/15
to
On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
> > Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
> > putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
> > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
> > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
A better example would be a Smithian hero vs. Cthulhu. Not a Second-stage Lensman, but say Storm Cloud or Dick Seaton.
Mark L. Fergerson
Don Bruder
Aug 2, 2015, 10:05:15 PM8/2/15
to
In article <8b85663e-30c7-4533...@googlegroups.com>,
costume.
>
> A better example would be a Smithian hero vs. Cthulhu. Not a Second-stage
> Lensman, but say Storm Cloud or Dick Seaton.
>
>
> Mark L. Fergerson
--
Security provided by Mssrs Smith and/or Wesson. Brought to you by the letter Q
"nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
> > > Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
> > > putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
> > > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
I saw it as exactly the opposite - SF wearing a reasonably decent horror
> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
> > > Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
> > > putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
> > > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
costume.
>
> A better example would be a Smithian hero vs. Cthulhu. Not a Second-stage
> Lensman, but say Storm Cloud or Dick Seaton.
>
>
> Mark L. Fergerson
Security provided by Mssrs Smith and/or Wesson. Brought to you by the letter Q
David Johnston
Aug 2, 2015, 10:33:19 PM8/2/15
to
On 8/2/2015 8:05 PM, Don Bruder wrote:
> In article <8b85663e-30c7-4533...@googlegroups.com>,
> "nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>>
>>>> Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>>>> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>>>> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>>
>> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
>
> I saw it as exactly the opposite - SF wearing a reasonably decent horror
> costume.
Science fiction is defined by its props while horror is defined by its
> In article <8b85663e-30c7-4533...@googlegroups.com>,
> "nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>>
>>>> Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>>>> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>>>> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>>
>> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
>
> I saw it as exactly the opposite - SF wearing a reasonably decent horror
> costume.
plots. Clearly Alien is horror. A small isolated cast is whittled down
one by one by a monster until the final survivor, a "final girl" if you
will manages to overcome the monster and escape with her life. Equally
clearly, Alien is science fiction since it takes place on a spaceship,
has no supernatural elements and indeed keeps it's fantastic elements
down to an impossible acid and FTL drive. Just as Caves of Steel is a
murder mystery and a science fiction story at the same time, Alien is a
horror story and science fiction at the same time.
Greg Goss
Aug 2, 2015, 11:02:58 PM8/2/15
to
"nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
>> > Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>> > putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>> > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
I don't like horror. I'm an SF fan. The story worked well enough for
>On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
>> > Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>> > putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>> > for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
>
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
me as SF, other than the magic blood.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.
William December Starr
Aug 3, 2015, 5:07:56 AM8/3/15
to
In article <8b85663e-30c7-4533...@googlegroups.com>,
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
>
> A better example would be a Smithian hero vs. Cthulhu. Not a Second-stage Lensman, but say Storm Cloud or Dick Seaton.
-- wds
"nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> said:
> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
>>> Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>>> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>>> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
For the record, I was quoting Sea Wasp there.
> On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
>
>>> Putting [Jim DiGriz] in _To The Stars_ would be tantamount to
>>> putting a Doc Smith hero into "Alien"; it's not ending well either
>>> for the Alien or the android, and it's ending a lot faster, too.
> To me, "Alien" was a horror story dressed up as SF.
>
> A better example would be a Smithian hero vs. Cthulhu. Not a Second-stage Lensman, but say Storm Cloud or Dick Seaton.
Quadibloc
Aug 3, 2015, 9:07:26 AM8/3/15
to
On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 6:27:47 PM UTC-6, William December Starr wrote:
> So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
> one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
> machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
> series anyway.
Your post raises an interesting issue.
> So: yes, the Jim DiGriz of the original trilogy was awesome, but a
> one-man drop-him-on-a-planet-and-watch-the-evil-regime-collapse
> machine he wasn't. Not back before Harrison got silly later in the
> series anyway.
In many cases, though, "how powerful" a character may be is not well-defined.
Many stories have a fairly weak protagonist accomplishing an amazing feat -
partly through his own heroism and bravery, but *also* through a great amount
of sheer luck of which the reader is asked to suspend disbelief.
That's what makes an adventure story "exciting"; if the hero were facing a
challenge he was fully equipped to handle, there would be no suspense; instead,
the challenge should be far greater than what he is expected to surmount, and
yet, against incredible odds, he still emerges victorious.
We all know that in real life, Flash Gordon wouldn't stand a chance against Kim
Jong-Un, never mind Ming the Merciless. But that isn't the point; being
entertained is the point.
John Savard
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