Why read The Stainless Steel Rat?

Book cover of The Stainless Steel Rat

Book description

In the vastness of space, the crimes just get bigger and Slippery Jim diGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is the biggest criminal of them all. He can con humans, aliens and any number of robots time after time. Jim is so slippery that all the inter-galactic cops can do is…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Stainless Steel Rat as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A. Zaykova

Author

If you experience bouts of nostalgia for classic pulp sci-fi, you should read this.

While not all aspects of this 1950s book aged well, I love its style and its protagonist, “Slippery Jim” diGriz, for his ideological stance, which involves zero grand motives. He intentionally chooses the life of crime because he believes it’s public entertainment in an otherwise pristine system, but is ultimately out-conned and forced to catch other criminals for an organisation called Special Corps.

This makes for a fun journey.

From A.'s list on heist novels set in space.

Wesley Britton

Author

While not exactly a pioneer in spy-fi, still when I posed a query to a number of fellow sci-fi authors asking who they would nominate for a Top 5 list of spy-fi writers, Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat stories were listed more than any other series. The tongue-in-cheek intergalactic adventures showcased “Slippery Jim” Di Griz morphing from a successful criminal into a reluctant secret agent for the Intergalactic Special Corps reporting to its leader, Harold Inskipp. In a series of novels and short stories, DiGriz Moves from planet to planet, universe to universe, traveling in time, and sharing his world-saving…

From Wesley's list on containing the origins of Spy-fi.