Interview by Paul Tomlinson - Brighton, 13th August 1999
Paul Tomlinson: Can you tell us a little about the new Stainless Steel
Rat book?
Harry HarrisonH: It's all in the title: The Stainless Steel Rat
Joins the Circus! He has to track down the villain, who is a member of the
circus. He has to join the circus, and I have him working as a professional
magician, since he's always been an amateur magician and always been
interested in magic.
I also reveal the secrets of how some magic tricks work, which will hopefully
keep the reader interested. You know the floating woman trick where they pass
rings over her? You'll find out exactly how they do it - and it's not with
wires. This adds a little extra touch which the reader should enjoy.
Apart from that it's the typical Stainless Steel Rat action-adventure -
rushing around and blowing things up! A lot of jokes. Porcuswine get into the
thing again - I love my porcuswine!
PT: You have this thing about pigs, don't you?
HH: No. Blame John W. Campbell!
PT: Why's that?
HH: I was working on one of the Deathworld books, and in the middle of
this damn book_ John would always feed you ideas: when I did the outline for
the first Deathworld, he sent me this six-page letter on what I could do with
the thing. He never told you what to do - but I opened up this letter
and thought great, that's not a bad idea.
Some writers would take every idea John gave them, write them up as a story
and sell them right back to John!
But I was right in the middle of this book - Deathworld 2 or 3
- which was all adventure and guns, and he said: Harry, have you ever
considered war pigs?
PT: War pigs?!
HH: That's what I thought! He said: They're ferocious! They could have
stainless steel tusks. I wrote back and said: John, everything you say is true
- but when I think of pigs, I think of bacon!
But he'd planted a seed, and I started reading up on 'swineology'. I was
halfway through this book, and I had to leave it and sit down and write
The Man from P.I.G.
Ever since then, I've been something of an authority on swine! In one of the
Rat books I put porcuswine in, and that worked fine.
PT: I was reading one of the old reviews for The Man from P.I.G.
recently, and the reviewer said that they weren't sure whether all the pig
lore was genuine, but that it sounded real.
HH: It was real! All that stuff about the Egyptians using their
sharp hoofs to tread the grain, it was all true. I don't invent any lore_
PT: You don't need to, do you?
HH: Absolutely not - there's enough strange happenings around!
PT: This is Stainless Steel Rat book number ten, and you say this is
the last one?
HH: Yes.
PT: But then you always say that!
HH: When you finish typing the first draft of a book - any book - you
always type, in upper case, THE END. You take those words out of the final
draft, you never have THE END in the book, but you put it there when you
finish the first draft to cheer yourself up.
This book I'm leaving it in, but I have THE END question mark!
It probably will be the last one, for a lot of complicated reasons.
I've already done some prequels, and the OAP Stainless Steel Rat short
story...
PT: In Stainless Steel Visions.
HH: So it is the last one: ten is a nice round number.
Unless Bill McCutcheon finally makes the film.
The Stainless Steel Rat Series