Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine

Harry Harrison 1925 - 2012

Very sad to read of the passing of yet another SF hero today, but what a fantastic and enjoyable body of work he has left us. As a young reader I loved such stories as The Men From P.I.G and R.O.B.O.T, Bill The Galactic Hero and of course Slippery Jim DiGriz aka The Stainless Steel Rat. Currently on the "to read" shelf I've a copy of Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (aka Tunnel Through The Deeps) a steampunk/alt. history novel published a good 20 years or so before the sub-genre was first pigeonholed.

Technicolor Time Machine cover art by the great Bruce Pennington

The Saturday Play: The Technicolour Time Machine (1981). Harry Harrison's fun tale of desperate movie moguls, airheaded Hollywood starlets, brawny Vikings and the time machine that brings them all together.

All credit to the original uploader. dl

You can also listen to the rather excellent, BBC Radiophonic LP version of Bill The Galactic Hero here.

Bill, The Galactic Hero

I was more fond of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series myself, but I practically wore out my original cassette copy of Bill. This rip is from the vinyl that replaced it thanks to a lucky charity shop find a few years back. Produced by Paul Mayhew-Archer and told by Kerry Shale, Bill still sounds great despite being heavily abridged to fit on an LP. Music and effects are courtesy of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop (natch) and there are some cues that may sound familiar from other places. The sleeve art deserves special mention as it is truly vile in a way that only sleeve art from 1984 can be.

dl