Bill, the Galactic Hero

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Bill, the Galactic Hero is a satirical science fiction novel by Harry Harrison, first published in 1965.

It is a response to Heinlein's controversially militaristic Starship Troopers. The overall plot is similar, the details rather less so; and Harrison makes the most of an opportunity to spoof the work of other authors including Isaac Asimov, "Doc" Smith, and Joseph Heller. Harrison reports having been approached by a Vietnam veteran who described Bill as "the only book that's true about the military" [1].

[edit] Plot summary

Bill is a farmboy who is shanghaied into the Space Troopers by an unscrupulous recruiting sergeant at a parade. After many drugged drinks, promises of medals, and fitting for uniforms on the spot, Bill and the rest of the recruits march off for basic training, aided by a hypno-coil the recruiter attaches to each of their boots.

Basic is at Camp Leon Trotsky with a drill sergeant named Deathwish Drang. Deathwish has fashioned his teeth into fangs in order to better scare the recruits. There he meets fellow recruits such as Eager Beager, who has volunteered for permanent latrine duty and shines the shoes of the rest of the platoon.

Bill is introduced to the "enemy" -- seven foot lizards called "Chingers" -- via propaganda posters in the latrine. After weeks of gruelling training bordering on torture (with techniques such as heating the concrete of the parade ground to ensure maximum numbers of fainting troops and long boring films played to exhausted recruits sitting in electrified chairs that zap them awake if they doze) Bill and his fellow recruits finally receive a short-term pass to the local town. Between times this town is a basic agricultural settlement, but when the gates of the camp open it transforms into a red light district of cheap bars and brothels. After slaking their thirsts with embalming fluid (from a mortuary cum saloon) the recruits join a long queue outside a cheap brothel. But just as Bill is about to enter an alarm sounds calling the troops back to base. Training is cut short as a battle in the war against the Chingers goes horribly wrong and the entire staff of Leon Trotsky is called up to reinforce the warfighters. The recruits are issued ID-cards and shipped out sans armor or food, since the personnel who handled those matters had already deployed.

He is then assigned to the ship Christine Keeler, where he becomes a Fuse Tender Sixth Class. "Eager" Beager is one of the only people he knows from Basic. He also meets FT6 Reverend Tembo, who keeps trying to convert Bill to Voodoo from Zoroastrianism, the latter of which Tembo dismisses as "Pure Superstition." At this stage Bill also discovers that the food on board, far from being better than the "plastic skinned sausages" of camp is in fact merely cups of water with all necessary nutrients dissolved in it.

FT1 Spleen, their boss, trains them on the job as fuse tenders, which he says normally takes a year. The process involves the relatively simple process of replacing burned out man-sized fuses with new ones. After the training Beager and Bill enter the shipboard defense room, where Bill sees Beager take pictures of the classified material and scurry off.

Bill decides to tell the chaplain what he saw. He has to skip lunch and goes to the chaplain's office. In the office is a gruff, overworked laundry officer, who informs Bill that the chaplain does not arrive for another fifteen minutes. As a result Bill is put to work sorting jockstraps. At 1300 the laundry officer flips a sign and his collar to become the chaplain. The chaplain assures the strictest confidence. Bill tells him about Beager and the officer calls him a liar. After a steady berating, the laundry officer comes back on duty. He says that he never made the oath and tells Bill to lead him to Beager.

When they find Beager he is shining shoes in his quarters. The Military Police grab him, and Beager's head opens to reveal a 7-inch high lizard who escapes in a small flying saucer. This is the true height of the Chinger (their size had been exaggerated for propaganda purposes). With the threat gone, nobody bothers to move Beager's body. Bill talks to it in lieu of friends.

While walking around the ship Bill runs into Deathwish Drang. He's scared, but Drang tells him that it's all an act, refined from many centuries of military training to ensure that recruits learned to fear the military before they learned to hate it. Drang laments that criminal acts and his connection to the old boy network didn't save him from deployment. In a moment of rare insight Bill is shocked that Drang expected compassion from the army and this snaps Drang back to his senses and he thanks Bill and tells him to leave.

Then the Keeler is called to action. Bill is excited to do his part against the Chingers. Bill stares at the fuses during the battle and has to ask what is going on. At different times he hears torpedoes or feels the ship manoeuvring. The shields go up, which means that all heat is trapped inside the storeroom, where Bill is assigned. It's hot but the regulations don't permit taking off the uniform. They do it anyway. During this battle a single fuse blows, but Tembo notes that it is merely normal wear and tear. Nothing more happens and after a few hours Bill is bored by the battle. It ends and a memo is circulated detailing the ribbons the participants are awarded, and the penalty of death for those who wear the ribbon incorrectly.

Further glimpses into shiplife are provided with Bill reading 3D horror comics and both he and Tembo receiving valuable mail from home. These take the form of postcards with tiny sections for writing, that are in fact various dehydrated products reconstituted by dunking them in a cup of 'dinner'. Tembo receives chocolate, Bill however gets simple cardboard in the form of a large phrase telling him to vote for a local politician.

In a rare departure for the novel the narrative leaves Bill for a brief passage to outline the possible way that the avarice of a senior officer's wife causes a new battle to be engaged before returning to the Keeler as it is called to arms once more. This time the battle is much more intense and Bill, Tembo and their fellow fusetenders are faced with genuine damage. Fuses explode constantly as the temperature and smoke increases until, while Bill is grabbing a replacement, the entire rack suffers a catastrophic failure and a wall of fire and debris engulfs the room, killing almost everybody. Bill is mostly protected by the fuse he is holding and, half stunned and shell-shocked he drags himself from the room desperately trying to find somewhere cooler. He ends up back in the ship defense room to find that all the gunners are dead. He moves one of the bodies from a seat so he can get into it because it looks more comfortable than the floor and, grabbing a gun control joystick for support unknowingly fires the ships guns at the lead ship of the opposing fleet. His actions are witnessed by an officer at the door who calls him a fighting fool and slaps him on the back. This last shock to his system is too much and he passes out.

Bill comes to in the infirmary and there discovers that he will be receiving the ultimate bravery award, the Nebula Cluster, on the central Imperial planet Helior, which legend has it is completely covered in a single city made of gold. He is less happy to discover that his left arm was damaged beyond repair and has been replaced by the right arm of his friend Tembo who was killed, along with the other fusetenders, during the explosion. He does cheer up a bit however when he finds that he can now shake hands with himself, and falls asleep doing so.

On the shuttle to Helior Bill meets two other soldiers also due to receive awards, one a grizzled army sergeant and the other a battle scarred cyborg. As they come in to land the front of the shuttle shows a massively shiny planet, entirely encased in the gold of the buildings that make up its entire surface. But a sudden flash reveals that this is merely a film projection on the screen and that it is actually night-time at their landing site on the planet-wide city (which is not made of gold at all), and also that it is raining. On arrival each soldier is issued with a directory the size and shape of a telephone book, which is a plan of the entire planet, which they clip to their belts and are advised the loss of which is a serious crime. They also bully the welcoming officer into giving them a robotic guide to show them the way to the awards ceremony.

They make it just in time and the ceremony is filmed for propaganda purposes. The Emperor appears with gem encrusted medals for them all and Bill falls to his knees in awe before discovering that it is all just a show and the others are actors. The three valuable medals are whisked away and replaced with pot-metal copies before the recipients are kicked out. They return to their quarters and although the other two are interested only in getting drunk and visiting the local brothel Bill is determined to see the sights. He journeys far to visit Helior's botanic gardens. At one point he takes a wrong turn and ends up on the very surface of the planet where he discovers that oxygen is brought in every day by massive ships as the city-wide planet has no forests to make oxygen of its own.

Eventually he finds the right way but the journey tires him so much he falls asleep and has his plan stolen. When he goes to report it to a police officer he is advised that losing his guidebook is punishable by death and Bill wisely leaves without pursuing the matter. He meets a stranger on a "see Helior and live" tour who is willing to let him copy down the route back to the barracks from his own plan for money. Bill does this and eventually makes it back. But as the records show that he was due to ship out days ago the officer becomes convinced Bill is lying and alerts the Military Police. One of these is Deathwish Drang who has bribed his way off the ship. Bill runs away and falls in with a group of homeless that call themselves the 'deplanned'. He assists them with a food raid but manages to escape again when they're discovered by the city police.

He retreats further and deeper into the bowels of the city until he opens a wooden door and discovers the earth upon which this planet-wide city was built. Attacked by sudden claustrophobia he panics but is grabbed and pulled through another doorway. Here he meets a friendly sanitation worker who, along with his colleagues, is desperately trying to come up with various solutions to coping with the planet-wide amount of rubbish produced every day. After coming to the rescue of a number of sanitation workers in a fight with a group of astronomical scientists the man hires Bill and lets him pick a new ID-card from the hundreds that have made it here through the garbage.

Bill is given an office and while inspecting the drawers discovers what he at first takes to be a dead body. However the 'body' opens its eyes and tries to recruit Bill into a revolutionary army, an offer Bill fearfully rejects. The mysterious figure leaves and Bill gets to work, quickly coming up with a plan to flood the universe with dirty food trays by a massive tax-funded postal scheme. After telling his boss and receiving a bonus he returns to his office. There another person is waiting for Bill and reveals himself to be a government agent employed to defeat the revolution. Bill is threatened into acting as a double agent and joining the revolutionary army when he is approached again. Between attending the poorly organised revolutionary army's meetings he works happily in the sanitation industry. His peace is shattered one day however when he hears somebody utter the code-phrase that the revolution is beginning and he hurries to the final meeting where an attack on a central city square is outlined. During the planning of the attack, Bill discovers that the leader is a man called 'Ecks' (X) but this is nothing new to the agent who gives Bill instructions for slipping out of the mob during the final attack before the authorities move in and arrest the revolutionaries. Bill does so and discovers to his surprise that the entire army is almost entirely made up of spies from various government and law enforcement departments. The exception is the mysterious 'X', who it turns out was only working for the man who has now become the President. Innocence ignored he is quickly dispatched by the dozens of armed troops surrounding the square. At the same time Bill is handed over to the MPs (one of them again being Deathwish Drang) where he is arrested for desertion.

Through the creative legal defence of a crooked lawyer Bill's charge is lessened from desertion (which is punishable by death) to sleeping on duty and he is shipped off to a military prison. There he befriends a prisoner, Blackey, who has (he claims) years of experience in the military behind him and is able to get what he wants. Bill acts as Blackey's bodyguard and hired-muscle and for a while lives a relatively luxurious life of smuggled food and liquor courtesy of his many connections and bribes. However the prison is only a holding stockade and when it gets too hot for the two of them Blackey draws up fake orders and also issues Bill with a forged license that shows he can drive a number of different vehicles, some of which he's never heard of. However Blackey has made a mistake and the pair find themselves being shipped to the planet Veneria in the Hernian solar system. This is a terrible swamp-world in the very front lines of the battle.

After being separated from his friend, Bill is put into a road-building chain gang. He discovers from his prison officer that the entire planet is hostile to human life (all native food is poisonous and even the vegetation is carnivorous and aggressive). He also discovers that both the prisoners and the guards alike are desperate to get off the planet and that a semi-official mutiny committee has been set up. Bill and his fellow prisoners are to build wooden paths out from the base to advance the human lines. However this is a hopeless endeavour as the prisoners are under attack constantly throughout the day by hordes of native amphibians ("Venians"), and whatever new paths they do manage to build are dismantled every night.

During a midnight attack on the base Bill flees into the swamp with a laser gun he has taken from a dead Venian. He climbs a tree and meets a Chinger that turns out to be Eager Beager. For a while Eager talks to Bill, trying to find out why humans have waged war on them. Bill provides no real insight and then emotionlessly watches as a giant snake attacks and eats Eager. Bill then sees a column of prisoners being led by Venians into the swamp. Thinking they may have food he attacks the column, yelling at everybody to get down before opening up with the rifle at waist level. This move kills all the Venians, but also wounds some of the soldiers. On of these turns out to be the (mortally wounded) Deathwish Drang. Bill decides that he wants Deathwish's teeth and forges a letter from Deathwish to that effect after he dies. He leads the prisoners back to base and then blows his foot off to secure a medivac from the planet.

The novel ends with Bill, now promoted to the rank of recruiting Sergeant, on a different planet trying to find new troops. He shanghais a young farm boy and as he's about to go away the mother runs crying towards them. It turns out that she is Bill's mother and the boy is his brother. She pleads he leave his brother behind, but Bill thinks of the recruiting bonus he gets in the form of years reduced from obligatory service and marches off with the lad in tow.

[edit] Series

Six sequels were published, from 1989 to 1992.

The first, Bill, the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Robot Slaves (1989), is by Harry Harrison.

The second, Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Bottled Brains (1990), is by Robert Sheckley and Harry Harrison

The third, Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure (1991), is by David Bischoff and Harry Harrison

The fourth, Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Zombie Vampires (1991), is by Jack C. Haldeman and Harry Harrison

The fifth, Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Ten Thousand Bars (1991), is by David Bischoff and Harry Harrison (Was also published under the title: "Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Hippies from Hell")

The sixth, Bill the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure (1991), is by David Harris and Harry Harrison

Bill, the Galactic Hero's Happy Holiday appeared as a short story in Galactic Dreams (1994) by Harry Harrison

[edit] The Bloater Drive

The standard ways of circumventing relativity in 1950s and 1960s science fiction were hyperspace, subspace and spacewarp. Harrison's contribution was the Bloater Drive. This enlarges the gaps between the atoms of the ship until it spans the distance to the destination, whereupon the atoms are moved back together again, reconstituting the ship at its previous size but in the new location. An occasional side-effect is that the occupants see a planet drifting, in miniature, through the hull. ("No-no! Don't touch it!")