RIP Harry Harrison: 12 March 1925 – 15 August 2012

So many individuals have had significant impact and influence upon our lives that it’s easy for the importance of those who have disappeared from our minds to dim and fade away. I hadn’t thought about Harry Harrison for many years – not in any meaningful sense, anyway – until this morning when I heard of his passing and felt a keen pang of loss and regret at the passing of one of my galactic heroes and, so soon after Ray Bradbury, another foundation stone of a bygone era of science fiction. I only met him once, getting on for 30 years ago at Birmingham’s Andromeda sf bookshop, and I’ve read none of his post-1980s output, but as a teenager his presence in my life was considerable and it extended well into my adulthood.

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