I'm no stranger to Harry Harrison's work, not least because I loved his 'Stainless Steel Rat' books when I was a kid and went back after COVID to review that entire series. Of course, his 1966 novel 'Make Room! Make Room!' was adapted to film as 'Soylent Green', though I don't actually recall reading it. This short novel for children arrived four years later in 1970, published right after the second 'Stainless Steel Rat' book, though it first saw print in the November 1969 issue of 'Venture Science Fiction', as 'Plague Ship'.

It hasn't been adapted to film but it really should be, because it's absolutely non-stop action with so much packed into a mere hundred and thirty pages that it's easy to devour in a single sitting. It didn't last me through one bath, as I finished it up and went on to something else, but few books four times the length contain quite so much going on. In fact, there's so much happening that we can't even break it down into sections with their own cliffhanger ending leading into the next, as Harrison knows that he doesn't have enough room to do that and so overlaps his cliffhangers, so that Donald Chase often has to deal with this thing while he's wrapping up that thing and getting ready to be floored by another thing.

Chase is a doctor when the book starts—and a junior medical officer at that—on a passenger liner called the Johannes Kepler that works the regular ninety-two day shuttle run from Earth to Mars and back. However, on this particular occasion, a meteorite hits the Kepler head on, taking out an uncomfortable amount of the crew. Capt. Kardyd is dead, along with twelve other crew members, because they were on the bridge when it happened, having an officer's meeting. Chase, who's just a mere lieutenant at this point, is safe in the sick bay, but it's now him and First Engineer Holtz in a much reduced chain of command and Holtz doesn't want the captaincy.

That's chapter one. The meteorite hits on page one; Chase realises what's happened and suits up on page two; checks with the computer system as to the nature of the emergency on page three; chases up to the bridge on page four and orchestrates a way inside on page five; discovers all the corpses on page six and the scale of the problem on page seven; and finally realises that it's only him and Holtz to save the day on page eight. That means that Harrison took a mere eight pages to introduce us to the setting, the location, the primary character and the first crisis at hand. I would guess that we haven't taken a breath by that point.

Crucially, he doesn't slow down from there. Of course, the doctor has to address all the immediate problems: repairing the ship, treating the wounded, burying the dead, explaining the situation to the hundred and forty-seven passengers—at least those who are still alive—and so on. However, once he realises that he's fully in charge at the end of chapter two, he's given the first in a series of further problems to solve, namely that they're now way off course and, unless they can correct very quickly indeed, they'll miss Mars and drift away into space. However, they can't even correct their course because they're tumbling in the wake of the collision and their lateral jets are out.

And so he assembles a team to tackle the problem, through a combination of skill, expertise and the sort of ingenuity that books like this one thrive on. Chief Petty Officer Kurikka helped to build the Big Joe and has served on her ever since her launch. Dr. Ugalde, of the University of Mexico, is only a passenger but he's also a talented mathematician. And Computerman Boyd can talk to the ship, through the rather antiquated computer systems that run it, the primary reason why this is clearly a classic children's novel written over half a century ago. I don't know what year this is but they're running routine trips to Mars on liners that are run on computer print-outs and ordinary electric typewriters connected directly to the ship's computers.

Oh, and just in case you thought that was plenty for Chase to be dealing with before he even gets to chapter four, I should add that they're also facing a water shortage, after the meteorite tore a hole in the hull through some of the tanks; their communications are almost dead too, so they're unable to talk to either Earth or Mars, but they do have enough to realise that they're being sent a warning of an imminent solar storm that's likely to fry them for good. Now you see why this has every reason to be turned into a movie? With modern day special effects this would look amazing and we're rarely given a moment to breathe.

We haven't even got to the plague yet that you all knew had to arrive sooner rather than later, as that original title of 'Plague Ship' is kind of a giveaway. That's an unprecedented plague too that arrived with the meteorite rather than being brought on board by one of the passengers. Oh, and there's a mutiny too, led by a pain-in-the-ass passenger who also happens to be a retired general, whose first stubbornly resistant encounter with Chase leads to him being carried away by a couple of burly crewmen in order to save his life. Of course, that descends quickly.

This book has sat on my shelf for much of my life, as part of a small box set called 'A Puffin Science Fiction Galaxy', but I don't believe I've ever read any of the four books contained within it. This is the one that seems to have stood the test of time best, if we can go by online ratings and reviews, but the other three aren't trivial either. Arthur C. Clarke's 'Islands in the Sky' and Andre Norton's 'Catseye' are children's books written by authors who wrote many more for adults, as indeed did Harry Harrison. 'Space Hostages', however, was by an author who specialised in science fiction for children, Nicholas Fisk, who seemed to be everywhere when I was ten. I should check out his book, 'A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair', though it came out in 1982 so isn't old enough for this project.

For now, I'm very happy that I chose to tackle this one instead. I knew Harry Harrison wrote both serious and humorous science fiction books for adults, there being a striking difference between 'Make Room! Make Room!' or the 'Deathworld' trilogy and the 'Stainless Steel Rat' and 'Bill the Galactic Hero' books. This shows that he was just as adept at children's science fiction, though he didn't go there as often. 'The Man from P.I.G.' and 'The Man from R.O.B.O.T.', comedy knock-offs of 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' set in space may be the most obvious examples other than this. His output also included thrillers, alternative histories and even a ghostwritten 'Saint' novel. I ought to dig deeper. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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