- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (21 April 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575057173
- ISBN-13: 978-0575057173
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 826,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The army made Bill the galactic hero what he is today - the perfect Starship Trouper, and proud possessor of two right arms and a lockerful of feet suitable for every occasion. Now he's been volunteered to join a suicide-squad run by Captain Cadaver to the well-known hell-hole planet of Eyerack.
About the Author
Harry Harrison (1925 -) Harry Harrison was born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Connecticut, in 1925. He is the author of a number of much-loved series including the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill the Galactic Hero sequences and the Deathworld Trilogy. He is known as a passionate advocate of Esperanto, the most popular of the constructed international languages, which appears in many of his novels. He has been publishing novels for over half a century and is perhaps best known for his seminal novel of overpopulation, Make Room! Make Room!, which was adapted into the cult film Soylent Green. Harry Harrison lives in the Republic of Ireland.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
SOLE survivor of a commando suicide mission against the Chingers, Bill is rescued by General Weissearse and is assigned a new role as "God's own tailgunner" aboard the Heavenly Peace, a space spider shaped spaceship, in Bill, the Galactic Hero ... The Final Incoherent Adventure by Harry Harrison and David Harris. At his tailgunner post Bill spends all his time seemingly playing a combat computer game, although his joystick japers have some quite devastating results on the planet of Eyerack below, a planet rebelling against the Empire. As so often happens in these stories, Bill survives when his ship is shot down, but is soon captured by the Eyerackians (ouch!) who, having not previously taken any prisoners of war, treat Bill as something of a celebrity. Bill assures his captors (Sid, Sam, etc) - who have very little experience with war - that the proper treatment of prisoners involves luxury hotels with well stocked bars, maid service, room service, real food, etc. As a celebrity POW, Bill is taken out on tour signing autographs and opening supermarkets, etc, but when he visits the neutron mines things start to go awry. Bill faces a dilemma: where do his loyalties lie? With the Empire Space Corps or with the Rebel Eyerackians? How can he choose between them? And what of Bgr the Chinger who has been most conspicuous by his absence during these proceedings? Despite its title, this story is probably the most coherent in this series of books and, like the original Bill, the Galactic Hero, it depicts the futility, horror and obscenity of war effectively through the use of comedy and satire.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
funny stuff on paper.
23 Oct 2001
Format:Paperback
Harry Harrison has an ingenius talent when it comes to creating fundamentally likeable,amusing characters and scenarios.Similar to sleeeepery jeeeeem digriz(anti-hero of the stainless steel rat series)Bill is stuck in the TROOPERS and all his adventures revolve around trying to get out and back to his sepia-toned robomule.The final adventure is more topical than previous novels but is firmly rooted in the soil of mirth with running gags,polevaulting gags and gags on rocket powered rollerblades(both left footed,chuckle chuckle chuckle)ah bejesus,this was my 'bath book' for ages,like a fine wine in nearly no way at all except its funnier.buy this for a much needed laugh at the military mind.
Harrison Doesn't Know When to Stop
11 Dec 2001
Format:Paperback
The first "Bill" book was good. Not great, but decent, funny and satirically sharp. The rest of the series is barely-mitigated garbage. By this point, he's clearly not even writing the stuff at all, as one "co-author" after another takes over. Sadly, it's difficult to see how it would be any better if he had. Harrison can write great, lively, funny, inventive sci-fi: the early "Rat" books, "Deathworld". "Deathworld" works so well because he wrote three short books, one short story and then stopped (or converted its protagonist into the Rat, one could argue). But the Rat books decay into a muddle when it becomes clear that Harrison just thrives on the stock elements of the stories; the capers, gadgets and booze. Continuity and development can go hang. Who cares if English was the native language of Jim diGriz's homeworld in some books but has to learn it in others? Who cares that the man who has dealt with money in every form from coin to electronic transfer can suddenly be confused by a wallet and its contents? Stick with the ride and it'll all work out OK. The Rat character and the main ingredients are good enough. After a while, though, the contempt that Harrison exudes for his audience starts to get wearing. If Harrison doesn't care enough to keep consistent about basic details of his major character's history, why should we care about him at all?
But with "Bill", we reach this point after Book 1. The character is not as accessible, his lot in life not as enjoyable to read about, the reversals he suffers tiresome. Add in some often appallingly bad attempts at genre parody (the Cyberpunk and Orson Scott Card efforts in one of this series, in particular, were cringe-makingly horrible) and it's no surprise that in every used SF bookstore I've seen, a chunk of the Harry Harrison shelfspace is taken by barely-touched copies of "Bill the Galactic Hero And Something Or Other" by Harry Harrison And Some Guy. I've read them all once and will never touch any of them again. Harrison clearly doesn't care about Bill, and nor do I.
Funny, satiric look at the Gulf War through the eyes of Bill
30 Sep 1996
Format:Paperback
Harris and Harrison have taken their Galactic Hero into the
middle of a war for control of vital neutron mines. This book
takes Bill back to satiric vision created by Harrison in the
original book, Bill the Galatic Hero. Funny, occasionally
moving, with an undercurrent of contemporary commentary on the
nature of war--and people who like their jokes well-aged.
middle of a war for control of vital neutron mines. This book
takes Bill back to satiric vision created by Harrison in the
original book, Bill the Galatic Hero. Funny, occasionally
moving, with an undercurrent of contemporary commentary on the
nature of war--and people who like their jokes well-aged.
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