RIP Harry Harrison

Harry and his writing influenced me when I was quite young, I discovered The Stainless Steel Rat roughly around the age of 10.  Jim was a rebel, something a young boy could look at and think “Wow, he is so bad but so cool!”.

Later in life I also discovered the Bill series which were a lot funnier.

Harry was best known for writing “Make Room, Make Room” which people might know better as Soylent Green.

It’s very sad that Harry never lived to see a Stainless Steel Rat movie but now I hope it happens more than ever.

 

Rest in peace Harry, your stories will stay with us forever.

A Stainless Steel rat runs free in space forever.

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Abandoned before writing

Sometimes I write stuff and scrap it.

Some of those things are written purely as a catharsis, to get them out of my system for the better.

Other times I have ideas and abandon them before ever committing pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Today I had such an idea.

Basically it was a short about the first time travel journey and those in the lab where it was made possible are arguing about where in history the first trip will be made to.

Many locations are suggested and rejected, The Marie Celeste, watching Titanic sink, finding out who really killed Kennedy. All are shot down, eventually the man who made time travel possible says he has a must do location, somewhere and something he MUST do.

When asked where he says he must go to the Hanna Barbera animation studios to prevent the creation of Scrappy Doo.

Even when I was pitching it to my brother earlier that internal voice in my head was telling me “This sounds shyte, don’t do it.”

So I didn’t.

EDIT:-

I want to be honest.  I didn’t write this story because I was too lazy to look-up when Scrappy Doo was invented. Decided to let honesty win out.

Concerns

I am a writer.  But I am also a Human Being.

So I worry.  I worry about upsetting people.

I worry about causing offence.

 

I’ve written about the Christian Religion and its God a few times.

Each time I’ve always been concerned about if people ever found those stories offensive or upsetting.

 

This is never my intention.

I like to be able to challenge perspectives.

 

Recently I’ve written a story based in Auschwitz in which I used the German word for Jew, in context.  Again, I worried about causing offense when it is published.

 

Yesterday I wrote a speculative fiction piece called Incursion.

It involved the use of Time Travel to change the then current future by influencing Hitler as a child.

It also featured a swastika (as well as a peace sign) on the cover.  Again I worried about causing offence.

 

Do I worry too much?

Or am I just being human?

Reaching the 10k landmark

In the last 2 hours I’ve completed 2 flash pieces.

The first took me over a personal landmark.  The very first time I have written 10,000 words in a piece.  It may be an anthology of different stories but it’s now over 10,000 words.

 

Yay me!

And the Thunderbirds related piece was quite good fun as well.

And I’ve still got another short on the go to still finish.