Here’s another item from the archives – a piece by Harry Harrison written for The Humanist magazine in 1961. Harry Harrison’s views on religion are well-known – see his short story “The Streets of Ashkelon,” probably his finest – and he has spoken on the subject many times on conventions panels. What follows is an early article on the topic.

Science Fiction Comes of Age
by Harry Harrison (1961)

Science fiction has become a medium in which the implications of humanism can be freely explored

The recent publication of two books heralds the entry of Science Fiction into the ranks of legitimate literature. Kingsley Amis’s New Maps of Hell (Gollancz) is a sympathetically critical survey of SF by a writer of reputation in literature, criticism, and education. Aspects of Science Fiction (John Murray), edited by G.D. Doherty, is no less than a sturdy stone in the underpinnings of the Institution itself – a grammar school text-book. This coming of age of SF is reminiscent of the acceptance of detective thrillers some years ago, but it is of far greater importance to the humanist.

The public image of SF has never been a very good one. When the term is mentioned lurid cover magazines and monster-horror films have a tendency to leap instantly to mind. Science fiction was never quite socially acceptable – at least, not until quite recently. Of course the same could be said about humanism. A glimpse beneath the surface of SF reveals that this is not the only thing these two have in common. Many of the advanced philosophies written about in the pages of this journal are already accepted SF conventions. Continue reading →

You probably already know from Harry Harrison’s auto/biographical notes that during the Second World War he worked with analogue computers, and you’ve probably read elsewhere that he’s currently working on a book about the history of these machines. The fact that these types of computers are often overlooked when people write about the history of computing led HH to write the following article for the UK magazine Personal Computing World in the 1970s.

The Mystery of the Lost Computer
by Harry Harrison (1978)

I am beginning to feel that I once lived in another world, one of those parallel worlds so familiar to readers of science fiction. Perhaps because I write SF I am beginning to believe in one of my own unreal universes. Why even my good friend, the good Doctor Asimov, who knows everything about everything, doesn’t seem to know about my world. In his book Science Past – Science Future he discusses the computer revolution. He jumps in one mighty narrative bound from Aiken’s Mark I, 1937-1944, to ENIAC in 1946. With nothing in between.

Nothing? With quivering hands I picked up the glorious first issue of Personal Computer World and turned to ‘Past Procession’ with its compact boxed history labelled COMPUTER CLOCK. The truth revealed at fast. But unhappily for me the truth outlined there is the same one that Isaac Asimov revealed. Yet I put it to you that both of these learned gentlemen are wrong. There were computers in general use between those dates; hard-working, practical computers that did their job remarkably well.

Continue reading →