Harry Harrison was born 12th March 1925 in Stamford, Connecticut, where he spent the first two years of his life. His family then moved to Brooklyn, and then to another borough of New York City, Queens, where Harrison grew up and went to school.

"By an accident of time and space I was born in the New England state of Connecticut and grew up in New York City," he wrote in 1975. "My mother was from Russia and my paternal grandmother from Ireland, so it is easy enough to visualise a hiccup in time that might have had me in the Russian army, rather than the American one, or planting spuds for a living."

Harrison's mother Ria (nee Kirjassoff) was born in Riga, Latvia, then part of the USSR. "My mother went to the States when she was, I think, fifteen years old. She was a school teacher until she married."

His father was Henry Leo Dempsey: he changed his name to Harrison soon after Harry was born. "My father was born in New York State, up on Oneida. He was a very witty man, with a real Irish sense of humour - his mother was born in Ireland - and I would say that my sense of humour came from my father. He was a printer all his life: he was a very good printer, a top technologist, and he used to teach printing."

The Harrisons moved several times whilst Harry was young: it was the time of the Depression and mass unemployment - "My father worked a day or two a month, no more, in the printing trade" - and they had to keep one step ahead of their creditors:

"We'd do midnight flits: rent a new apartment, get a month's concession, pay for one month, stay for the two months, then for a third and owe the rent. The ice man would come with his horse and cart, and move the whole house into another apartment. We moved so often I really had no friends as a kid, and I did pretty rotten at school - or rather, I did well at things I enjoyed: I got the highest marks in class for Science and English, and the lowest marks in Spanish.

"I wasn't interested in writing very much when I was young, I was more of an artist. I did write and draw for the school magazine, sort of half and half. I won an art competition when I was in grade school, for 'Save the Animal Week' or something - I drew a squirrel saying 'We want more nuts!'"