Long Live the Rat!

"When Kingsley Amis read the first Stainless Steel Rat novel he said, 'Well, Harry, you have written the first picaresque science fiction novel.' I nodded sagaciously-and at the first opportunity rushed to my dictionary.

Picaresque 1. of or relating to a type of fiction in which the hero, a rogue, goes through a series of episodic adventures.

Well, that is a fair enough description. My hero is alone against the universe, with every man's hand-if not every woman's-turned against him. He is without the law, verily a law unto himself, with a strict sense of morality. Aren't the two mutually incompatible? No, as you will soon discover..." -Harry Harrison, from the Introduction

"Cheerfully larcenous and anarchic. Long may the Rat run roughshod over the forces of law, order, and the square world." -The Orlando Sentinel

"Harrison's fictions constitute one of the main monuments in modern SF." -Paul Di Filippo, Scifi.com, on 50 in 50