The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted

Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 1987 by Bantam Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-05220-6

Of all of Harry Harrison's many great books and series, the Stainless Steel Rat series with Slippery Jim DiGriz stands apart. In this book, Jim is out for revenge against Captain Garth - neither the rank nor the name are real - who is responsible for the death of Jim's mentor, The Bishop. Nothing is ever simple, a pretty straightforward desire to throttle Garth gets morphed into Jim joining - albeit through a back door - the army of Garth's home world, a rapid rise and fall of rank of the self promoting type, and ends with Jim fighting against the army to save a pacifist planet and people whom Garth would enslave and kill without mercy. Plenty of action and the reader isn't ever bored.

5 editions

JIm FUlner reviewed The stainless steel rat gets drafted by Harry Harrison

4 stars

This studbook was fun, but in a different way than the others in the Stainless Steel Rat series. The 7th overall book in the series, chronologically it comes immediately after the Prequel "The Stainless Steel Rat is born" returnreturnOur hero slipper Jim is to avoid being brought back to him some planet to face bank coppery charges and gets dropped off on a military planet. He finds out his nemises is the now the general of the whole damn army and he finds his way to get drafted. Ends up on another new planet that has no government, and the military doesn't know how to deal with that. Its inhabitants seem to practice anarcho-mutalism, which the author calls Individual Mustalism. Here it gets kind of preachy, similar to out how Little Brother gets about Free Software, and the apparent "leader" (as much as their can be in anarchist society) is …

This studbook was fun, but in a different way than the others in the Stainless Steel Rat series. The 7th overall book in the series, chronologically it comes immediately after the Prequel "The Stainless Steel Rat is born" returnreturnOur hero slipper Jim is to avoid being brought back to him some planet to face bank coppery charges and gets dropped off on a military planet. He finds out his nemises is the now the general of the whole damn army and he finds his way to get drafted. Ends up on another new planet that has no government, and the military doesn't know how to deal with that. Its inhabitants seem to practice anarcho-mutalism, which the author calls Individual Mustalism. Here it gets kind of preachy, similar to out how Little Brother gets about Free Software, and the apparent "leader" (as much as their can be in anarchist society) is even named Sterner, though he claims to have come upon IM the same way everyone else did, from a super intelligent AI. returnreturnThere is a little problem with continuity as Jim is used (willing or not) as an agent of The Leauge, but if this had happened in a Pre-existing timeline, why no mention of that when he's first captured by the League in Book 1?

Subjects

DiGriz, James Bolivar (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.
Science Fiction