PROBE
Harry Harrison
(continued)
Interview by Alyce Wilson
Do you still have hopes that Esperanto will become a universal unifier?
I don't know. I don't think about it. I wish it would, but I mean, I'm pretty happy with Esperanto. I still am. I'm an honorary patron of Esperanto, one of the more important people in the movement. That's something I'll carry, the green star of Esperanto. I had an awful lot of fun in it.
You already talked about science fiction crossing boundaries.
I'm a communicator. I'm a writer and an artist. I communicate visually and in words, and that's why I studied Esperanto. I wish we had one homogenous language in the world.
And in my lifetime, English has become the world language. The first time you had an airline, everyone was talking in English to land the plane. We're the world power now. It's a very hard language to learn. It's hard to speak it.
And I'm all for communication. That's what my life is about.
Now, you've taken an anti-militaristic stance.
You have to be in the army to understand and hate the military.
Right. And you were very outspoken about the Vietnam War.
Any war.
What's your take on the war in Iraq?
It's a complete mistake in every way. I mean, there's no reason to go there, for oil and to make a bit of money. I mean, it's a complete lie to the people. There are no weapons of mass destruction there.
I spent some time in England, and the English want to throw out Blair over it. I mean, he pitched it good, like Bush did, as a real good war. It's not a real good war. It's a real bad war. And it's a bad war with a worse peace. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong.
You have the terrorists now. Imperial America is not doing a very good job of being an imperial power.
Well, I guess the military is being stretched to the limit right now.
Yes, they're stretched. There's a lot more to go, except that don't like
to see people getting killed for no reason. I mean, it's a war by the
military for Halliburton, basically.
And give Bush that. He's not a liar. He kept his word. He was picked, bought and paid for by the big corporations. He paid them all back. He reduced the taxes on the rich, and Halliburton is getting the whole world, you know?
And I think it's a tragedy. It's America. The U.S. Constitution is the finest document ever written. We should be following it. I've written a trilogy about that.
When I speak out against what the Americans are doing, I point out what they should be doing. I'm not the anti-American. I'm pro-world. I'm pro-human being. I'm pro-communication.
Definitely. Well, you've written a lot of alternate histories, so you've
probably thought about this. The United States with Gore as president.
What would be the difference?
No, no. I don't think it would be quite that different. Democrat, Republican are too much like the same kind of person. And even if they're very liberal minded, like Clinton, apart from sexual innuendoes, he never could force through the Democrats any kind of really strong Medicare.
Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex. He was right. The power blocks, the big corporations, the drug companies, the military complex, they run the country, and they make all the money. And not much is done out of their hands. They say it does. But it's to my despair. America could be the light of the world.
Do you think that the role of science fiction is to show you what the
worst future could be and what the best could be?
Yes. I mean, I'm either an optimist or a pessimist. If I see something going badly, gloom and doom, it's a very bad scenario. How bad will it be if we don't do something? I'll write a hopeful story. I wrote a hopeful novel. And I wrote a lot of short stories, working around what mankind might do to help themselves. And I'm definitely not just a pessimist. If I see a grain of hope, I try to share it.
