The science fiction writer Harry Harrison died last week in Ireland. He was born in 1925. During his career he wrote Make Room! Make Room! which was the story basis for Soylent Green, and also the Stainless Steel Rat series and the Deathworld series. However, I consider his greatest work to be Bill: The Galactic Hero, of which one Nam vet said it was the only true book about the military.
B:tGH was published in 1965, partly as a parody of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. The main character is Bill, who is involuntarily inducted into the space troopers to fight the Chingers, reptilian marsupial aliens with four arms. After basic training at Camp Leon Trotsky, he is assigned to fuse tending duty on board the Christine Keeler. After an inadvertent act of heroism, he is sent to the capitol planet Helior to receive a medal. There he becomes lost, joins both the Sanitation Department and a rebellion against the emperor, is caught and court-martialed but escapes with a minor sentence, ends up on the planet Veneria, but survives and returns to the empire.
Along the way we meet Deathwish Drang, Bowb Brown, Tembo, Eager Beager, Fuse Tender First Class Spleen , the Man Called Eks, Ghoulem the android, a chaplain/laundry officer, and a variety of troopers, guards, prisoners, and ordinary citizens.
In my opinion it is almost as fine an anti-war novel as Catch-22 and just as funny. There were several sequels but they are much inferior to the original.
A few years ago at a family reunion during a discussion of politics one of my cousins asked, "Who are They?" My three brothers and I answered in the same words a guard used to Bill when he asked the same question: "They are everyone who wants to be one of Them. They are both a state of mind and an institution. . . .They die off and are replaced, but the institution of Theyness goes on." Bill's response was, "I'm sorry I asked."
I emailed Harry Harrison with the story, and he replied that he was gratified that his words were still being quoted and were found to be so appropriate.
RIP HH, I'll have a glass of Real Embalming Fluid and some plastic-skinned sausages stuffed with road sweepings in your honor.