The Stainless Steel Rat made a big impression on me. I found the short story collection The Best of Harry Harrison in my school library, and discovered that it lives up to its title. I began to collect Harrison's short stories and novels - Rebel in Time, the Deathworld, Starworld and Eden series and, more recently, The Hammer and the Cross trilogy. I enjoyed them as great SF adventures, but that was about the limit of my interest until a couple of years ago.

In 1997 I was working on my Masters dissertation in American Studies. However, I had not yet decided what I could write about that would be both interesting and academic. I decided that rather than attempt yet another staid dissertation on, say, William Faulkner (is there really anything more to say?), I would instead take a risk and write about my favourite author - Harry Harrison. Apart from Leon Stover's biography, there has been surprisingly little academic interest in Harrison. Which is a shame because the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the author had something to contribute beyond, of course, writing great adventure novels. At this stage I had no idea just how much Harrison had contributed to the SF genre as an editor and illustrator as well as being one of the seminal novelists in the field. My academic supervisor accepted my proposal, but not without some scepticism, I thought.

I remember a class in Secondary School where my English teacher was discussing the meaning of a Seamus Heaney poem. He joked that we should simply 'phone the poet and ask him, which has always stuck in my mind. It was the first time, perhaps, that I realised literature was not something written by people who were now dead, that it was a living, relevant medium. So I decided to push my luck and ask the author for an interview. I wrote to Harrison's agent and, to my surprise and delight, Harry asked could I make it to Dublin for an interview. Of course! In July that year I did my first interview with the author. I didn't know what to expect, but I found Harry to be witty and down-to-earth. I recorded some twenty pages of interview notes and got a lot of good quotes.

I met Harry again at the Eurocon held in Dublin Castle in October 1997. This was my second SF convention, the first being in Belfast about ten years earlier. But Eurocon was the first one I was really able to appreciate. It was good fun, and I had the good fortune to meet Paul Tomlinson for the first time. Over the next year or so we exchanged e-mails, discussing how to 'contextualise' Harry's work: where does the author fit into the whole SF scene; how does his work reflect attitudes in America from the 1940s onward, etc.

Since this was to be an academic project, I couldn't just write what I wanted to, ie. "Harry Harrison is my favourite author because..." or "What I did at Eurocon during my summer holidays!" And some of Harrison's work did deserve detailed analysis. For example, Harry's experience in the US Army contrasted greatly with the portrayal of the military in Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Harrison wrote Bill, the Galactic Hero to set the record straight. Because good SF says more about today's attitudes rather than predicting the future, I wrote about Make Room! Make Room! and Soylent Green. Overpopulation problems, religious dogma, and a hatred of intolerance and violence are recurrent themes in Harrison's work, so I discussed "Mute Milton", Rebel in Time, "The Streets of Ashkelon", and "The Defensive Bomber."

The title of my dissertation is American Dream or American Nightmare? SF as a Mode of Social Commentary, with Particular Reference to the Work of Harry Harrison.

I'm pleased to be able to take this opportunity to thank Harry, and to say "Happy Birthday!"

Brian Ireland