Lives in passing: Harry Harrison, 1925 - 2012

[peteryoung]

R.I.P. Harry Harrison. I met Harry three times (although I was hardly on first name terms with him): once at Novacon, where I bought him a pint; once at Glasgow Airport where I asked the check-in staff to 'look after him' on his flight to Gatwick; and once at Noreascon in Boston, where we walked together from the Marriott Hotel over that long bridge to the Convention Center. He was always one of the funniest writers, except when he wrote darker things like Make Room! Make Room!, a dystopian novel of an overpopulated New York, and one that deserves to be on the SF Masterworks list. I'll be taking a walk up Lexington Avenue this afternoon, and I'll probably be thinking of Harry.

Comments

[hnpcc]

Thank you for posting that. I would have missed the news otherwise, most likely, and I liked his Stainless Steel Rat series back in the day, even though I hadn't read anything of his for quite a while. To be honest I don't think I even knew he was still alive.

I certainly didn't know that Soylent Green was based on his novel, which I'm now going to have to go and hunt down.