Harry Harrison has authored well over fifty novels including “Make Room! Make Room!”, which was later adapted into the film Soylent Green. Harrison, a prolific traveler, uses the science fiction genre to paint satirical portraits of society.

DD: When you began your career in science fiction you were an illustrator / writer for EC Comics working on anthology titles like Weird Fantasy. We know that there’s a real fondness for those titles among the current generation of Hollywood filmmakers. Do you have any early EC work that you’re most proud of?

HH: I’m afraid that about all of the EC work Woody and I did was pretty hack. Romance and horror. Just when we talked Bill Gaines into doing SF Woody and I broke up. He went on to greater heights while wrote, drew and edited a lot of comics. I was saved when comic books died and I moved into editing and writing pulps.

DD: Have you followed the evolution of comic illustration over the years? Are there any artists or books that have stood out to you?

HH: I’ve kept track. The genius in the field is of course the French artist, Moebius. A lesson to all other artists. My art school friend Johnny Severin has matured into the best of the pack. As always the artists are far better than the writers; none of the writers have any artistic sense which makes for lots of talking heads.

DD: Your novels tend to explore the social aspects of futurism. Let’s talk about Stainless Steal Rat. The series grapples with, among other things, celebrity, morality and the dangers of not thinking your actions through to their conclusions. How did the character of Stainless Steel Rat come to be?

HH: It started as an accident; I had written a narrative hook, that opens the story, then I had to explore how and why. In the course of writing the ten Rat novels I thought deeply, expanded the philosophy and motives. I have had many fan letters saying how the philosophy affected them-including a historian, a politician and a lawyer.

(Stainless Steel Rat illustrated for 2000 A.D.)

DD: “Bill, The Galactic Hero” has been framed as a direct response to Starship Troopers, but the satire wasn’t contained to that one book. You dissected the work of several of your contemporaries in the first novel and it reads as if there’s a very heavy real-life influence as well. How much of your personal military experience did you deconstruct for the first “Bill” novel?

HH: This was my military novel-reflecting my experiences in the army. I hate it-and the philosophy that motivates it. I loath the SF novels that glamorize war. I chose black humor as the best way to express my feelings. In the book I took pot shots at STARSHIP TROOPERS and Asimov’s Trantor. Isaac was pleased, laughed and said he had never thought of the CO2. Bob never talked to me again…

DD: “Make Room! Make Room!” is arguably your most famous novel, due in no small part to the film “Soylent Green”. Several of the themes are eerily similar to predictions driving the “green” movement of the past few years. What originally inspired your approach the subject matter of “Make Room”?

HH: Reality. After many years away I revisited Cuautla, the town in Mexico where I lived for a year. The population had doubled and there were slums, beggars, a rotten life. Mexico instituted death control-wiping out malaria with DDT-without adding death control. I began researching population growth, pollution, the loss of resources; the result was this novel.

DD: You have a rich writing history in the space opera genre, including a run on the Flash Gordon strip. Does adventure always have to be a component in a good science fiction story?

HH: It can be. In my case I discovered that I could move the plot with action and the reader would cheerfully accept all my philosophy and think-pieces.

DD: Do you think Science Fiction has as relevant of a place in society as it did in the last century?

HH: SF will always have a place-it is the thinking man’s rubbish. SF can blue-sky speculate without boundaries. We need this kind of speculation in a pragmatic world.

DD: It’s no secret that you’re an advocate of Esperanto. What are your ideas about Earth’s need for common language? At this point of your life what do you think it will take to make a one-world language emerge?

HH: Very little-or too much. Language is such an important part of culture that few will relinquish it. Esperanto still works and the world needs it. Perhaps, some day, we will realize that.

DD: If you could advance one area of science over night, what would it be and why?

HH: Cultural relativity. If we could find the causes of war and eliminate them-what a paradise our world could be.

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