A new Stainless Steel Rat book—hurrah! Slippery Jim DiGriz, a con artist in the 35th century, just wants to retire in peace, but handout-seeking relatives arrive, and before he can say "bowb," he's off to preach racial equality. This is an odd deviation from the usual sci-fi adventures to be sure, but it’s so well told by Phil Gigante that the moralizing is barely noticeable. Sinking his vocal teeth into a performance as good as any one-man play, Gigante is perfectly matched to the material; even a minor medic is easily distinguished. Gigante could take this show on the road and sell out every night. Country hicks drawl, generals bark, bankers smarm, and Slippery Jim wanders through the insanity with a bemused calm, soothing the listener even as porcupine-pigs from space wreak havoc. A.Z.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Harrison returns to his long-running interstellar adventure series for the first time since 1999's The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus. Slippery Jim DiGriz, a thief and con artist, is enjoying a comfortable 35th-century life when his hick relatives show up, farm animals in tow, looking for a handout. Jim and his beloved wife, Angelina, are soon careening around to various backwater worlds where Jim hopes to ditch the unwanted kinfolk. The series' 1960s origins are most painfully obvious in the descriptions of a planet where the green-skinned, shiftless, slow-witted majority oppresses the smarter, slower-breeding, pink-skinned minority. Shocked not by the race wars but by the existence of races at all, Jim (himself quite pink) declares that the different skin colors "should have been bred out centuries ago." Modern readers are unlikely to find this tale appealing in any way. (Aug.)

A new Stainless Steel Rat book—hurrah! Slippery Jim DiGriz, a con artist in the 35th century, just wants to retire in peace, but handout-seeking relatives arrive, and before he can say "bowb," he's off to preach racial equality. This is an odd deviation from the usual sci-fi adventures to be sure, but it’s so well told by Phil Gigante that the moralizing is barely noticeable. Sinking his vocal teeth into a performance as good as any one-man play, Gigante is perfectly matched to the material; even a minor medic is easily distinguished. Gigante could take this show on the road and sell out every night. Country hicks drawl, generals bark, bankers smarm, and Slippery Jim wanders through the insanity with a bemused calm, soothing the listener even as porcupine-pigs from space wreak havoc. A.Z.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine