To understand the unique brilliance and enduring popularity of the Stainless Steel Rat, it’s important to understand the world in which these stories take place. Shattering the status quo is James Bolivar DiGriz (aka The Stainless Steel Rat) and his roguish, adventure-filled criminal schemes. Society is sterile, homogenous and lifeless. It is the far future and genetic manipulation and controls have bred the “malcontent” or “criminal” gene out of humanity.all but a few anyway.
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes Given that the sci-fi 'failings' were pretty common to most (all?) of the sci-fi around at the time I guess the strong voice accounts for the books' popularity.Įssentially this work was 'of its time' and has dated badly.įortunately it's a very short book, perhaps only 50,000 words or so. I found the book's only saving grace to be that the first person narrator, Jim, has a strong, lively voice with a measure of humour to it. The world/universe building are very basic and rather uninspired. The plot is pretty thin and involves a bunch of face-changing and unlikely guesswork.
#Rat utopia movie
The story is a rather silly one about chasing a murderous female criminal who Slippery Jim falls in love with in a deeply unconvincing 1950s movie kind of way. So in short, the laws of physics are overturned at will with not even a two-word description of the engines or principles involved, and the computer revolution goes unanticipated. Our hero (a thief who turns policeman) steals money in bags and carries it to other planets hidden in his luggage. Our hero spends a fair time rustling his way through dusty heaps of files.Ĭurrency is paper and coin. And that's pretty much it.įiles are held in filing cabinets on paper. They take anything from 1o seconds to several minutes to search modest databases.
You feed them navigation instructions on tape. (some run on coal!)Ĭomputers on the other hand do bugger all. The robots have 'robot brains' and can do complex jobs like being policemen. The Stainless Steel universe has the 'standard' many-times-faster-than-light travel, instant communication (via psychic telephone men this time), and highly intelligent robots.Ī strange distinction is made between robots and computers. The main points of interest for me were how poor a prediction of future technology it was, and how badly sci-fi was written 55 years ago. My copy comes from the late 80s when it was selling very well. First in a successful and long running series. Pulp sci-fi written in 1961 and reprinted dozens of times. The Stainless Steel universe has the 'standard' many-times-faster-than-light travel, instant communication (via psychic telephone men this time), and highly This was an interesting book to read.