Stainless Steel Visions

STAINLESS STEEL VISIONS Harry Harrison

INTRODUCTION

It was wonderful to grow up in the world of the pulp magazines. Brassy and colorful they were, filled with adventure and wondrous machines. Some of the many categories invented in the thirties still exist today, in book if not magazine form; love and romance, Western and detective. Many categories have slipped away — air war and battle stories — while many heroes are now forgotten. In what lonely grave does Operator Number 5 lie? Close to The Spider, Cash Gorman, G8 and his Battle Aces no doubt.

Give science fiction that; although its magazine existence has tottered, down from around sixty titles a month to three or four, it never died. SF magazines still publish more short stories in a year than magazines dedicated to any other kind of fiction.

At the age of seven or eight I did not notice the deficiencies of this particular art form. Yes, I did read all kinds of pulps— except Western or romance. (Particularly loathsome was that hybrid, Rangeland Romances.) But my attention strayed more and more to science fiction until I was reading all that was being published. It was exciting, that was what counted. Having no critical standards, I did not notice the banality of the writing, the repetition and the hackwork. Excitement was what mattered, emotional and intellectual — that was the double-barreled attraction of SF. Still is. Where else can you get the machine as hero? This was good stuff, still is good stuff. When written well nothing can better it.

I sharpened my literary teeth on the short story. It is a concise art form with a beginning, middle, and end. The reader must be attracted by the opening, get involved with the middle — and be surprised by the ending. Surprised not only by the sharp twist of an O. Henry ending, but captured by the surprise of a laugh or smile, sharp contrast or relief.

(An O. Henry ending is best exemplified by his "Gift of the Magi. " Where the poverty-stricken couple exchange presents. He sells his watch to buy a set of combs for her beautiful hair — but she has had her hair cut and sold it to buy a fob for his watch….)

The opening must charm and entice the reader. In the pulp days this was known as a narrative hook. Something to hook the editor into turning to the second page. The first page of a story manuscript — double-spaced, of course — has the author's name and address in the upper left corner, word-length in the upper right. The title is halfway down the page, leaving a lot of white space for editorial typesetting advice. The word "by" takes up a line, as does the name or pseudonym under which the story is to be published. Which leaves only about eight lines of copy. Since pulp editors were faced with a mountain of unsolicited dreck every day, anything that got them to turn to the second page would probably get them to buy the story. This first-page copy was the narrative hook.

I once practiced writing these narrative hooks, wrote a great bundle of them. One of them hooked me so much that I went on to write a story to find out what happened next. This is what I wrote:

"James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge—"

I was waiting for the word "charge, " I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling. The crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on top of the cop's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly rumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed.

The story was titled "The Stainless Steel Rat. " It was later incorporated into a novel of the same name — the first in the series. Writing narrative hooks had proven a profitable exercise.

Every science-fiction writer has been asked, more than once, where those crazy ideas come from. (I know one writer whose response is that he buys them from a man in Reading, Pennsylvania.) There is no single answer. I know another writer who kept a small shelf of works by what he termed original story writers. When he needed a story fast he would pick a story at random, glance through it — then turn the plot on its head.

Then there is the greed-and-glory ploy. It is always a pleasure to sell a story to a magazine; an even greater pleasure when it is the cover story. Illustrated by the cover painting. Fred Pohl, then editor of Galaxy, had a publisher who could not resist a bargain. Fred worked from home most days a week. When he wasn't in the office the publisher would see all the budding painters who wanted to be cover artists. If their samples of artwork had some tiny degree of talent, and were suitably cheap, he would buy them. And leave them in the office as a rude shock for Fred when next he appeared.