I once met a woman in a bookstore who was in the process of buying Harry Harrison's 1965 classic "Bill, the Galactic Hero." She told me that she'd read it many times already, and that it was the funniest book ever. Well, I've never forgotten that conversation, and had long been meaning to ascertain whether or not this woman was right. It took me almost 20 years to get around to this book, but having just finished "Bill, the Galactic Hero," I must say that, well, it IS very amusing indeed. In it, we meet Bill (no last name is ever provided), a simple farm lad on Phigerinadon II, who is shanghaied into the galactic emperor's army to fight in the war against the lizardlike Chingers. And what a grueling odyssey Bill goes through before all is said and done! He experiences a boot camp from hell, serves aboard the starship Christine Keeler and is almost killed, gets lost on the planetwide city of Helior, becomes a sanitation man, a revolutionary, a spy, fights on a swamp planet that's almost as nasty as Harrison's original Deathworld, and on and on. Harrison keeps this short novel moving along furiously, and the level of invention is very high throughout. It is most impressive how just about every page features some amusing incident, laff-out-loud line (and I am not an easy person to make laugh out loud) or imaginative detail. The story is a very violent one, a scathing commentary on the madness that is war and the crazy institution that is the military, and part of the story's humor comes from the joking, nonchalant manner in which horrible proceedings are described. But there is much that is just inherently flat-out funny: The characters drink Heroin Cola and eat chlora-fillies (part chlorophyll, part horse wieners). There's a rock band called The Coleoptera (beetles). The combatants use flintlock ray guns. There is a Robot Underground Resistance (RUR!), and some characters are named Schmutzig von Dreck (I guess it helps if you know some Yiddish), Gill O'Teen and Eager Beager. Still, as I said, this is a brutal tale, and the reader would be well advised not to grow too attached to any character, as at least half the cast gets offed before the book is through. And that brutalization extends to our main man Bill, who becomes less naive and more animallike as the novel proceeds. This is a tale told with almost Alfred Bester-like panache and marvelous satiric detail, but at times the detail is a bit sketchy; I'm referring to details of geography here, and background history and character. With so many incidents to cram into the book's short length, many of them seem a bit rushed, and characters come and go without leaving much of an impression. I suppose what I'm saying is that Harrison might have expanded his book a bit; that it's almost too concise and to the point. Still, the story certainly does entertain. But getting back to that woman in the bookstore...IS this the funniest book that I've ever read? Well, I must admit that no book has ever made me laff more than John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" (1980), and that Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan" (1959) may be a worthier sci-fi comedy than this one, but "Bill..." certainly does hold its own in that august company. After all, any book that provides big laffs and a positive message isn't to be sneezed at...
Harry Harrison wrote "Bill, the Galactic Hero" in 1965. America's failure in the Korean War was starting to be replayed again in the early years of the Vietnam Conflict (Vietnam was a "conflict" before it was a "war", although some historians say it was only a "police action"). The Hippy movement was on the rise. The Sixties were a weird time of Green Berets, Flower Power, Black Panthers, and Free Love. You were either a hippy or a commie-hater. You either enlisted or you got drafted. Either way, you were fucked.In the world of science fiction, numerous authors tried to capture the weirdness of the Sixties and, specifically, the War. Some succeeded, some failed. Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" was an unforgettable novel that tried to capture the absurdity of war while still being respectful of the military. (Haldeman was drafted and served as an engineer in Vietnam. He was wounded in battle and received a Purple Heart.)Harrison's "Bill, the Galactic Hero" was anything but respectful. It was, in every way, a castigation of war and the military. It's also damned hilarious."BTGH" is, essentially, "Catch-22" in outer space. It's a short novel, and Bill isn't a very bright or memorable character---he's kind of a cipher-like Everyman to which any and every awful thing that can happen, does.The summary: Bill is a farmer on a farm planet who gets "drafted" (more like kidnapped) by the Space Troopers to fight in the Space Emperor's battle with the Chingers, an alien race of seven-foot tall reptiles with four arms who want to eat humans. Bill suffers through torturous basic training, almost getting killed on a starship, being erroneously charged with going AWOL while on shore leave, and being the only surviving member of his platoon on a war-ravaged jungle planet. He also learns that the Chingers are actually seven-INCH tall, peace-loving creatures who don't understand why Mankind wants to wipe them out of the universe, that the war is only going on in order to make profit for the military industrial complex, and that almost everything being reported on the galactic news channels are completely wrong and pro-Emperor propaganda.The kicker: Bill doesn't care. He's a good soldier, which means he does what he's told, even when what he's told goes against everything his mother taught him and even when he knows he's being lied to.This book will alternately make one laugh out loud and cringe in disgust with its disturbingly dead-on satire and portrayal of the insanity of war. There is something brilliant within these few pages of Harrison's somehow forgotten and overlooked novel.
What do You think about Bill, The Galactic Hero (2004)?
Bueno, la verdad es que me esperaba mucho más de esta novela en tres partes. En cuanto a personajes, Bill es incoherente entre la primera y la segunda parte. A alguien a quien le tratan tan mal en la primera parte no puede sentirse tan especial en la segunda. Pero lo cierto es que me esperaba mucho más humor, cuando lo que me he encontrado es una comedia satírica, en el sentido más basto del término. Es un humor basto, que se pierde si no has tenido la suerte de leerte los libros de ciencia-ficción a los que hace referencia implícita. O visto las películas, porque claro, yo el libro de starship troopers no lo he leído (y sí, sé que debería por la crítica antimilitarista que se hace...) pero sí que me he visto la película y he podido relacionar el entrenamiento que recibe Bill con la película...Sigue leyendo
—Hacedores Desierto
I read this when I was too young to get the humor of the hapless dung farmer Bill, who is drafted, mutilated, and turned into a public "hero" in an interstellar war with lizard aliens. I suppose it is dark, sardonic satire of the military and government and propaganda. But at the time I just thought it was nastier and nastier, sort of like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" with all of the likeable characters and charm removed.Perhaps I shall read this again in memory of Harrison, who died yesterday.
—Alessandra
Several of the quotes on the back cover of this book compare it (favourably) to Catch-22 and the comparison is certainly justified. This is a similar anti-war satire on bureaucracy and the military but for me, it didn't quite work. Despite Terry Pratchett claiming on the front cover that his is the funniest SF book ever written, it's not. His own are more laugh out loud funny, and Douglas Adams might be in there, or even Harrison's other series featuring The Stainless Steel Rat but this was too depressing, possibly because it's all too plausible, to be that funny for me.
—Raj
