Digital Wanderer

I was at the sports club just now and came across the local magazine "Patron", which featured an interview with Harry Harrison. He was introduced as the last living classic of science fiction, which is not far from the truth, since Heinlein, Asimov, Sheckley, Simak, and Lem are already gone.

There was a lot of interesting stuff in the interview. First, Harrison’s mother was from Riga, while he himself, though born in the USA, has not lived there since as far back as 1956.  He served in the army during World War II, working as an anti-aircraft gun mechanic and firearms instructor. He now lives in Ireland. He cannot stand any fantasy whatsoever, including Potter and The Lord of the Rings. But the reasons given seemed far-fetched to me — supposedly, there is no reflection in them on people’s development and behaviour in real, complex fantastical situations. The total print run of Harrison’s books exceeds 10 million, with 6! of them printed in territories that were once part of the USSR. And today the writer would be almost as poor as Sheckley was in his final years, were it not for the Russian-speaking reader, who still loves him.