The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You: It seems fairly simple to save the world

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You by Harry Harrison

I’ve been enjoying Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series, especially the superb audio versions produced by Brilliance Audio. Slippery Jim DiGriz is a con artist who’s been forced to work undercover for the Special Corps, an intergalactic investigating agency. Each of these short novels starts with him (and now his family, too) hiding out from the Special Corps and living it up on other taxpayers’ money. Each time, the Special Corps traps him and sends him off on a fast-paced, dangerous mission that usually involves saving the galaxy in some way.

This time aliens are invading, so Slippery Jim, with the help of his beautiful and deadly wife and their delinquent teenage twins, infiltrates their lair by disguising himself as an alien who wants to join their army. How could he possibly know that his alien costume is so sexy that he’ll have to fight off male suitors while he’s trying to save the galaxy?

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You is another entertaining offering from Harry Harrison and narrator Phil Gigante. It was fun to see Jim and Angelina’s twins grown up and following the family traditions. Unfortunately, this story relies on some of the same plot elements that we’ve seen before — it seems fairly simple to save the world when your enemies are all brainwashed by outdated moral philosophies, you’ve got a time machine on hand, and the laws of physics bend at your will.

Still, if you’re willing to overlook all that, then these stories are definitely entertaining, especially with Phil Gigante reading them.