The Stainless Steel Rat

Lore & Background

James Bolivar diGriz is a charming, quick-witted criminal who justifies his crimes by arguing he provides society with entertainment and only steals from insured institutions. He displays a strong but restricted morality, stealing without compunction but deploring killing. He is a speaker of Esperanto and advocates atheism. In his first story, after a successful bank robbery, he is outfoxed by the Special Corps—a crime-fighting organization staffed with former criminals—and recruited to fight crime. The series takes place in the far future, with Earth still known and visited; a time-travel event places the Rat's era around the late 346th century.

Reader's Guide

The Stainless Steel Rat series comprises 12 works, including anthologies such as The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat (1978) and The Stainless Steel Rat Omnibus (2008). Spin-offs include comic adaptations in 2000 AD, a gamebook titled You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat, a board game, and video games for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The character also made a cameo in Harrison's story 'The Fourth Law of Robotics' in the tribute anthology Foundation's Friends. Key supporting characters include Angelina diGriz, the Rat's wife and fellow criminal; their twin sons James and Bolivar; Special Corps director Harold Peters Inskipp; Professor Coypu, inventor of a time helix device; and the Bishop, the Rat's mentor. The Kekkonshiki, or 'Gray Men', are a human culture that prefers domination and uses technology to manipulate minds.

Did You Know?

• A 2000 AD comic adaptation featured the Rat with an appearance modeled on actor James Coburn.
• The gamebook You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat allows the reader to make decisions, though it is generally impossible to fail the mission.

The Rat's Persona and Moral Code

James Bolivar diGriz—known to the galaxy as "Slippery Jim" or simply "The Stainless Steel Rat"—is a futuristic con artist, thief, and general rascal created by Harry Harrison. Charming and razor-quick in conversation, he possesses an almost absurd breadth of criminal talent: disguise, martial arts, bank robbery, lock-picking, and what he himself might call "professional fibbing." What makes the character genuinely memorable, though, is his internal logic. The Rat justifies his heists by claiming he is essentially a performer entertaining the public, and he insists he only targets institutions that carry insurance, reasoning that the money will simply cycle back into the economy. His moral compass, while narrow by conventional standards, is consistent: he will lift a vault without a flicker of guilt yet genuinely abhors taking a life. Like several of Harrison's creations, the Rat speaks Esperanto and is a committed atheist, traits that further set him apart from the typical space-opera hero.

Origins and the Far-Future Setting

The character first appeared in a 1957 short story published in Astounding magazine, in which a freshly successful thief pulls off an elaborate bank heist before being outmaneuvered by the Special Corps—a crime-fighting outfit staffed by former criminals who recruit him. Harrison later expanded that same story, with minor tweaks, into the opening of the series' first full-length novel. Over the decades the franchise grew to twelve works, including two omnibus collections (1978 and 2008) that gathered the earliest three books. The setting is deliberately deep in the far future: the name and location of humanity's original homeworld have been forgotten, and, according to a character named Professor Coypu, the Gregorian calendar is no longer in use. A time-travel plot in one novel—where DiGriz is flung 32,598 years backward and lands in 1975 A.D.—anchors the series' present roughly in the late 346th century, giving the adventures a sense of vast temporal distance from our own era.

Adaptations Across Media

The Rat's popularity extended well beyond the page. In the late 1970s and 1980s, three novels were adapted into comic strips for the British magazine 2000 AD, written by Kelvin Gosnell and illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra, who gave Jim a look modeled on actor James Coburn. A notable production hiccup saw an explanatory panel about the character accidentally placed at the end of the first episode rather than the beginning; Harrison himself wrote a letter to the editors pointing it out and was paid three pounds for the trouble. The strips were later colorized and reprinted by Eagle Comics as a six-issue series in the mid-1980s, and again collected in paperback and hardcover in 2021. The character also crossed into interactive formats: a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style gamebook, a board game designed by Greg Costikyan for SPI's Ares magazine in the early 1980s, and two 1984 video games—one for the ZX Spectrum co-written by Harrison himself, and a text adventure for the Commodore 64.

Love, Family, and the Special Corps

The Rat's personal life centers on Angelina diGriz, a criminal mastermind who mirrors his talents but lacks his scruples, being far more willing to kill. Their first encounter comes when Jim, working his initial assignment for the Special Corps, tracks her down—and falls in love. After her capture she undergoes psycho surgery to curb her homicidal impulses and joins the Corps herself. Their relationship culminates in a marriage that takes place during the final trimester of her pregnancy. Angelina becomes a recurring partner on the Rat's adventures, often spotting solutions Jim himself cannot see, though her suppressed violent streak occasionally resurfaces, particularly when another woman draws too close to her husband. Their twin sons, James and Bolivar, inherit their father's attitudes and many of his skills, though the Rat misses most of their first six years due to his time-traveling escapades, glimpsing them only briefly as babies at the close of one novel. The twins eventually marry the same woman, a twist that underscores the family's shared DNA.