The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted

'''Harrison, Harry. The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted.''' (c) 1987. Toronto: Bantam, [1988]. [S. F.] Book Club Edition.

Nominally set "In a galaxy where civilization covers every world with steel and ferroconcete," as the overgeneralizing blub on the cover of TSSRGD tells us, all the stainless steel rat novels are at least tangentially relevant; this one is immediately relevant for Mark Forer, an AI computer that has created the political philosophy of Individual Mutualism (a variety of Anarchism) and is a kind of "fled god" (our term) for the planet inhabited by the followers of his philosophy. At novel's end, the Mark Forer computer rejoins society, but to gain community, not power and computer-takeover.

RDE, Title, 6Aug19