{"id":3063,"date":"2006-04-30T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=3063"},"modified":"2017-12-21T07:04:38","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T13:04:38","slug":"book-report-the-stainless-steel-rat-for-president-by-harry-harrison-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/30\/book-report-the-stainless-steel-rat-for-president-by-harry-harrison-1982\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison (1982)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes, I take a long time to select which book to read next after I complete a book.  I look at my bookshelves bulging with choices and, quite frankly, am overwhelmed with the possible selections.  Sometimes, though, the books leap off of the shelf in a meaningful segue.  Of course, immediately after reading <i><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/30\/book-report-the-case-against-hillary-clinton-by-peggy-noonan-2000\/\" target=\"_new\">The Case Against Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/i>, I picked up <i>The Stainless Steel Rat for President<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Like <i>The Case Against Hillary Clinton<\/i>, I bought this book from the red dot, three for a dollar shelves outside Hooked on Books, but I didn&#8217;t buy the two on the same visit.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve tried to read <i>The Stainless Steel Rat for President<\/i> on at least one other occasion, but its tour-de-farce tone didn&#8217;t draw me in, and I moved onto other things.<\/p>\n<p>This time, though, the over-the-top voice and the story of how the intergalactic criminal and undercover operative known as the Stainless Steel Rat ventures to a banana republic of a planet whose thriving tourism industry funds a repressive dictatorship.  Penned in 1982, it offers a fable of a criminal fixing an election to free a backward, galactically latino people.  If I wanted to, I guess I could dig out some sort of political posturing of the time and a backlash or support of Reagan, but wow, it would take some effort.  I vaguely remember when one could read politically-based fiction without trying to determine whose side the author is on.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, it&#8217;s an entertaining read, clocking in at the old school under 200 page mark.  An entry into a series, but not a chronological or particularly serialized series, so you can enjoy it if it&#8217;s your first Stainless Steel Rat book or if you haven&#8217;t read a Stainless Steel Rat book in a decade.  In short, it&#8217;s good old school science fiction.  Well worth my thirty-three and a third cents.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=B000BP5SO2&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes, I take a long time to select which book to read next after I complete a book. I look at my bookshelves bulging with choices and, quite frankly, am overwhelmed with the possible selections. Sometimes, though, the books leap off of the shelf in a meaningful segue. Of course, immediately after reading The Case [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18805,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/18805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}