Harry Harrison: "The Finest Hunter in the World," "Down to Earth" and "Commando Raid"

Let's read three more stories from the 1983 British edition of Prime Number, a collection of stories by Harry Harrison, creator of Deathworld, The Stainless Steel Rat, Bill the Galactic Hero and those fun dinosaur and lizardwomen novels.  

"The Finest Hunter in the World" (1970)

This is a gimmicky joke story, but entertaining.  A short fat dude is, somehow, the greatest hunter on Earth.  He arrives on Venus in hopes of killing the notoriously deadly swamp-thing and becoming the greatest hunter on two worlds.  The strapping six-foot two guy in Muckcity who greets the hunter resents the inequality between them.  One of Harrison's little jokes is that Muckcity is so repulsive that the population is so small that this good-looking hunk has to be the town's hotel owner, sole journalist, mail carrier and swamp guide.  The hunk thinks he should be rich and famous and this pudgy little hunter the loser, and hopes the swamp-thing will kill the hunter so he can steal anything of value from his bags. 

The hunk and we readers soon (the story is only three pages long) learn a little something about the techniques that have made this less-than-impressive figure the finest hunter on Earth, techniques that leave both the nearest swamp-thing and the unscrupulous Muckcity hunk among the hunter's trophies.

Better than most three-page joke stories.  It feels like a magazine filler story, and is better than a lot of magazine stories, but it seems that it debuted here.  Asimov, Greenberg and Olander included "The Finest Hunter in the World" in Microcosmic Tales.   

"Down to Earth" (1963)

Here we have an Amazing cover story that would go on to be included in an issue of Urania with a typically awesome Karel Thole cover illo and a Dutch anthology with the image of a safety pin on its cover.  Harrison himself must be happy with "Down to Earth;" it appears in three Harrison collections and when Harrison was credited with editing a 1968 issue of the magazine The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told it was this story that was included in its pages.

Unfortunately, I am not happy with "Down to Earth," a pedestrian parallel worlds/alternate history twist ending story that tries to camouflage the fact that it is a parallel worlds/alternate history story in a way that is an outrageous waste of time.

The story starts out great.  It is 1971 and the first two Earthmen have landed on the moon.  One of them falls in a hidden crevice and the other, Gino, tries to rescue him--but without success.  Heartbroken, he returns alone to the orbiter piloted by the third member of the mission, Dan.

Dan and Gino return to Earth to find they are in an alternate universe in which World War II is still raging in 1971--the United States remained neutral back in the '30s and '40s and the Germans conquered Europe and they are now in the '70s making advances in both the USSR and the United States.  There is some adventure stuff as our astronauts are captured by German soldiers and then rescued by American troops.  This adventure stuff isn't exactly bad, but it is totally mundane, the sort of stuff we have already read innumerable times in our lives as people who read popular literature.  (Harrison did a much better job early in the story, on the moon and in the orbiter, portraying scenes of danger and risk and the emotional toll suffered by Gino and Dan.)

Eventually our heroes meet Albert Einstein, who explains in an absolutely unconvincing way that they are not in an alternate universe or on a different timeline like they have read about in science fiction magazines; akshually, the astronauts are in the same "objective" world they always have been but in a different "subjective" one, their perceptions altered due to the psychological stress they suffered when their comrade died and from the experience of being out of sight of their home planet while on the far side of the moon.  Harrison is wasting our time with this goofy explanation because it doesn't change one bit how the story itself operates--to get them back to the Earth you and I inhabit in which the Axis powers lost World War II, Einstein doesn't mess with the two men's psychologies or perceptions--he invents a box with a switch on it that has to be thrown at just the right moment in just the right physical location.  The twist ending is that Einstein, Dan, or some unnamed somebody, goofs, and Dan and Gino find themselves in a third version of Earth, one in which the United States is a monarchy.

Maybe this is a joke story and I am not getting the joke?  A spoof of what it appears to be?

"Down to Earth," even though it started out with stuff I love (space suits, danger on the moon, tragedy in space) is composed mainly of a bunch of stuff I almost never like, stuff that rubs me the wrong way.  I try to avoid alternate history stories because they annoy me, maybe because I'm interested in actual history, studied history as an undergrad and in a doctoral program (which I dropped out of without a degree) and read actual history books and memoirs of World War II servicemen, and so don't seek that sort of material in SF.  I've mentioned here on the blog a few times that I find Kennedy-worship annoying, and I also find the sort of FDR-worship and Einstein-worship that this story indulges in annoying.  (What's most irritating about this sort of thing is that writers take for granted that the reader is a fellow worshipper, and don't introduce Roosevelt or Kennedy into a story with the idea of arguing a persuasive case for why they are so awesome--they just assume you agree they are awesome and lazily  mention these idols to serve as a cheap source of emotional power for their stories.)  So I've got my own peculiar hang-ups that make it hard for me to enjoy this story; I'm giving it a thumbs down, but maybe if you don't have my hang-ups, or maybe if you've never read an alternate history story before, you will like this story.  

"Commando Raid" (1970)

Here we have another story that debuted in Prime Number.  "Commando Raid" went on to be included in Joe Haldeman's oft-reprinted anthology Study War No More. 

This is a bleeding-heart liberal twist ending story.  Or maybe again I have to ask myself if this is a spoof, a goof on bleeding-heart liberal stories, or a satire of what a conservative thinks liberals think (you know, what Harrison thinks a conservative thinks a liberal thinks....oh boy.)

In the beginning of "Commando Raid" a captain who is an expert tracker and stalker and woodsman and anti-racist is accompanied by an uneducated redneck from Alabama, a private, on a secret night  rendezvous with an informant from a jungle village who gives them the inside dope on the village the Americans are going to swoop down on tomorrow with helicopters and hovercraft.  Harrison emphasizes how awesome and brilliant the captain is and how lame and racist the Southerner is.

We go through lots of planning and prep and then finally comes the operation.  The Americans surround the village and we learn they are not there to capture it or to kill anybody, but to deliver a new well, modern toilets, and birth control to the primitive natives; the natives don't want these new fangled devices, but the Americans know what is best for them--less disease and fewer children.  The leader of the villagers attacks the captain with a sword.  The captain is an expert fighter and parries multiple blows with his megaphone, but eventually his megaphone is too wrecked to serve, so he orders the Alabaman to shoot his teargas gun at the swordsman.  Somehow the swordsman is not felled by the tear gas, and runs over to the Southerner to attack him with the sword.  The Southerner can't shoot more teargas yet because he is putting on his gas mask, so he knocks over the village elder with the butt of his teargas gun and then, when the man is down, shoots some additional gas into him.

The captain has the Alabaman arrested for harming a native and delivers a long lecture, full of talking points and lists, declaiming about how the Unites States has treated other nations badly and the entire world rightly hates the United States and the only way the human race will endure is if the United States gives all these handouts to poor foreigners and makes sure the foreigners don't have too many children and he finishes off the harangue--and Harrison finishes off his story--by expressing his elite contempt for the Alabaman.

This story (I think) is ridiculous heavy-handed agitprop, the self-righteous wish fulfillment fantasy of the sort of guy who daydreams of being a white savior to nonwhites and a persecutor of racist whites as well as a better fighter and tracker than Conan.  It sucks, but perhaps it offers insight into the thinking of center-left types like Harrison circa 1970.

Left: Are we seeing stars through the moon?
Right: Is there really a sword and sorcery scenario to be found in this anthology?

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Not so good a batch this time.  Students of Harrison's entire body of work may find "Down to Earth" interesting, as, so I understand, late in his career Harrison wrote many alternate history books, and the concern about overpopulation in "Commando Raid" of course brings to mind Make Room!  Make Room!, which I haven't actually read but which everybody talks about all the time.

We'll see if we get back to Prime Number any time soon.