Angelina – Firebrand!

I recently came across a reference to Ron Miller’s book Firebrands: The Heroines of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which includes a (smallish) picture and reference to Harry Harrison’s character Angelina from the Stainless Steel Rat series.

Art © Ron Miller 1998

Miller is probably best known for his incredible illustrations of planet scapes and deep space, but here he turns his attention to some of the strongest and most memorable female characters in science fiction. And while there is nudity here, his women are not of the overly-pneumatic and smothered-in-baby-oil variety.  Firebrands was published by Paper Tiger in1998.

There’s a short biography of Miller on the Wikipedia site and a better one on Miller’s own site. Also have a look at the artwork in the ‘Prints’ and ‘Catalog’ sections of the site — and the ‘Movies’ section, which has production artwork from Dune.

The text in firebrands is by SF author Pamela Sargent, who says of Angelina: “Even her husband, the amoral supercriminal called ‘The Stainless Steel Rat,’ is hard-put to restrain his bloodthirsty wife.”

Art © Ron Miller 1998

Harry Harrison – Where I Write

My sitting room in Florida — also used as an office.

I wrote the new RAT book there.

http://www.whereiwrite.org/harrison.php

PCW – Personal Computer World – End of an Era

Back in February 2008 I mentioned that Personal Computer World magazine was celebrating its 30th anniversary, and that Harry Harrison had contributed an article to the second issue of the magazine.

Sadly the magazine has now published its last issue – the August 2009 issue. It was a shock to receive the letter from their subscription department – PCW was the computing magazine I’d bought since I got my first computer. The closure of the magazine was blamed on falling advertising revenues as a result of the current recession or ‘financial downturn’ or whatever we’re supposed to be calling it.

PCW’s ’sister magazine’ Computer Active! is still being published by Incisive Media.

Editor Kelvyn Taylor and the rest of the PCW contributors are a fantastic group of writers, so I’m sure we’ll continue see their work elsewhere, but this really does feel like the end of an era.

Harry Harrison Podcast (Part 6 – Audience Questions)

The final part of the interview recorded at the Octcober 2001 Octocon SF convention includes a discussion of Harry Harrison’s more recent projects, such as the West of Eden and Stars and Stripes trilogies, as well as questions from the audience.

This is the largest part of the five, running for just over 16 minutes, and coming in at a 15.2Mb download.

06 – Up to Date & Audience Questions

A transcript of the whole interview is included on the Harry Harrison website: the direct link to the page is:

 http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm/hh/oct2001.htm 

Octocon is the national Irish science fiction convention, held annually in October. Harry Harrison will be a guest at the 2009 convention, which is being held over the weekend of the 10th and 11th October. Full details can be found on the Octocon website.

Harry Harrison Podcast (Part 5 – Soylent Green)

The fifth part of the interview, recorded at the 2001 Octocon SF convention, has Harry Harrison speaking about the Charlton Heston movie which was based on the novel Make Room! Make Room!

This is the penultimate part of the interview, it runs for around 9 minutes and is an 8.7Mb download.

05 – Soylent Green

Harry Harrison Podcast (Part 4 – Bill the Galactic Hero)

Part four of the Harry Harrison interview, which was recorded ‘live’ at the Octocon Irish national SF convention in October 2001.

Continuing the more or less chronological survey of Harry’s first fifty years as a SF writer, this part focuses on his first major ‘non-Campbell’ novel, Bill, the Galactic Hero.

This runs for just over 7 minutes and is a 6.8Mb download.

04 – Bill the Galactic Hero

Harry Harrison Podcast (Part 3 – John W. Campbell)

Here is the third part of the interview recorded at Octocon in 2001. This part begins a sort of chronological sprint through Harry’s first 50 years as a writer, focusing on his working relationship with legendary Analog / Astounding editor John W. Campbell.

This runs for a fraction over 12 minutes, and so is a bigger download (approx. 11Mb) than the previous parts, so you may have to be patient if you’re on a slow connection.

03 – John W Campbell

Harry Harrison Podcast (Part 2 – Adaptations)

Part two of the interview I conducted with Harry Harrison at Octocon in 2001.

This part includes a discussion about Harry’s short story collection 50 in 50, and some comments on some of the movie projects which were under discussion in 2001. Some of them will never, sadly, see the light of day — such as the Mel Gibson film version of The Technicolor Time Machine and the Jan deBont movie of The Stainless Steel Rat…

This part runs for about five minutes and is approx. 3.8Mb. It should start playing if you click on the link below…

02 – Adaptations & 50 in 50