All these R.I.P. posts are adding up.
Today it’s writer Harry Harrison. You might not of have heard of him, but I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie that came from his novel, Make Room! Make Room!. That movie was called Soylent Green.
Set in 2022, it doesn’t have long to become true, one way or another:
The book was set in 1999, when the USA was out of resources, the population was 300 million, and NYC was so crowded that an entire family shared a single room.
Aside from the first detail, HH wasn’t too far off.
>>>the population was 300 million
Wow, we’re well over that and no street crowding like the movie.
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I shall miss him. My mother and I used to buy his books whenever they were released.
Harry Harrison was great. I interviewed him once for an SF magazine. He went beyond being an SF writer – he was looking to bring some sense to the world, wake it up, and do good for people oppressed or in poverty. He went out of his way to do that.
Also, he wrote an incredible series of “alternative history” books set in Viking England…these were very powerful and he did a lot of research. He highlighted the fact that heretics in Christianized England had their scalps left on Church doors, stuff like that. But the hero in this string of books was not even a pagan Viking (which Harrison considered superior to Christianity), but he was a questioner…and basically was a Viking atheist! Harrison gave credit to people of the past as thinkers and willing to buck the status quo of belief systems.
Another thing about Harry Harrison was he really worked to become a writer. He held down jobs and balanced having kids with trying to get his career to happen and make him enough money to support himself and his family.
In short, Harry Harrison was a genuinely great writer…very few of them around today in my view.