James Bolivar ''Slippery Jim'' diGriz, Special Corps agent, master conman and interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog with his lovely, vivacious wife Angelina on the luxury planet Moolaplenty when long-lost Cousin Elmo arrives. And Cousin Elmo''s not alone: he''s got a ship full of porcuswine and their keepers, and they''re all looking for a new home. And before he''s even finished his first cocktail, his bank account''s been drained and he and Angelina are off wandering the stars on a sabotaged ship.

In this darkly satiric work Harry Harrison brings his most famous character out of retirement for a grand tour of the galaxy, cocktail in hand, his luscious wife by his side, a smile on his lips and larceny in his heart. He''s in search of adventure, gravitons, and a way to get the porcuswine out of his life ... for ever!

Trapped in the confines of their fragile lifeship, a tiny band of aliens and humans faces the awesome challenge of survival after the mysterious explosion of a giant spaceship.Giles Steel, a member of Earth''s master race, assumes responsibility for erupting tempers, the dwindling food supply...and the saboteur whose ugly work has already begun!

Someone was tampering with time, altering the past to eliminate the present, fading people out of existence into a timeless limbo.One of the victims was Angelina, the lovely, lethal wife of James Bolivar di Griz - better known as the Stainless Steel Rat. That put Slippery Jim on the trail of the villains, a trail that went back to 1984 and an ancient nation called the United States of America. The Stainless Steel Rat was determined to rescue his wife. And before he was through he''d thrown dozens of centuries through time in both directions. But then he didn''t have much choice: to save Angelina he had to save the world. Again.

You can''t keep a good rat down, not one as slippery as Jim di Griz, alias the Stainless Steel Rat. And you can''t keep his nose out of trouble either.Jim and the lethal, luscious Angelina owe themselves a honeymoon and Paraiso-Aqui looks like the place. Settled long ago by voyagers from the southern continent of Earth (or Dirt as it was known) Paraiso is warm and easy. But all is not well in paradise. The serpentine tyrant General Julio Zapilote is about to sail back into office in another rigged election, and the chance to scupper him is just too good for Jim to miss. Corruption, bribery, graft and chicanery - for the Rat it''s just like coming home.

Young Jim diGriz has but one ambition in life - to become a master criminal, perhaps the greatest that his backwater homeworld, Bit O''Heaven, has ever seen. So that he can learn the ropes, he has to mix with the right people - or rather the wrong people. And for this kind of on-the-job training the best place to meet the worst villains is in prison. But even for a customer as slippery as Jim, getting behind bars isn''t easy.So Jim does a bank job, very badly, with the avowed intention of getting himself nicked . . .

Slippery Jim diGriz is in the process of robbing the new Mint on Paskonjak when the heist goes terribly wrong. Threatened with a horrific death, Slippery Jim is allowed to cut a deal with the Galactic League: voyage to the planet Liokukae and bring back a missing artifact - the only known evidence of alien life-forms found in 32,000 years of galactic exploration. For diGriz there are a few catches. One is Liokukae itself - a dumping ground for the League''s misfits, murderers, maniacs, and the incurably obnoxious. Another is a little matter of life and death. To ensure the utterly untrustworthy diGriz''s cooperation, the League has given him a slow-acting poison, allowing him thirty days in which to succeed . . . or die. Now the Stainless Steel Rat is on his way to a world that is hurtling backward down the evolutionary scale - a land of fanatic, goat-herding Fundamentaloids, murderous Machmen, and a rusty guru named Iron John. DiGriz has developed an almost perfect cover: a four-member rock band that has a way of giving its audiences what they want to hear. But while the days tick away and diGriz''s life expectancy lowers, the mission evolves from finding an artifact to liberating a planet . . . which is a tune the Stainless Steel Rat most certainly knows how to sing.

Assembled here are fourteen of Harrison''s best, spanning time and space from the England of old to empires millennia from now. Among the stories included are "The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat," in which the cops have finally caught up with an aging Slippery Jim DiGriz; "Roommates," the original basis for the movie Soylent Green; and twelve more galaxy-spanning classics! From the bestselling West of Eden trilogy to Bill, The Galactic Hero and its sequels, from the Deathworld series to the Stainless Steel Rat books, Harry Harrison''s career is a series of landmarks. Stainless Steel Visions is another: his first major collection of short fiction.

Sinister religions, missing physicists, super strings and retarded entropy; it''s all in a day''s work for Slippery Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, the Universe''s greatest ever thief and con artist. But this time the stakes are rather higher than even Slippery Jim is used to. His wife Angelina has disappeared and he has nothing to go on except a pool of blood and a severed hand (formerly belonging to a physicist of stellar repute) - and the fact that she has expressed an interest in The Temple of Eternal Truth, a cult offering a sneak peek at heaven - for a price.

But there''s a job to do and the Stainless Steel Rat is the man to do it. After all, the devil makes work for idle hands...

''Set a thief to catch a thief'' goes the old saying. And when you are the richest man in the Universe and someone is systematically robbing your various banks blind you''d better set the best thief ever to catch your thief. After all, even at four million credits a day plus expenses, you can afford him. Enter Slippery Jim DiGriz. And that''s how it all began for Slippery Jim and his wife, the ever deadly Angelina; persuaded from a life of stockmarket dabbling and picnicking by the hover tanks, hard cash and outright flattery of undoubtedly the richest and probably the oldest man alive; Imperetrix Von Kaiser-Czarski. It would have seemed rude to not take the job and after barely four weeks (at four million a day) of watching the latest in computers (courtesy of son James) sift through the available evidence Jim has his first lead. Each time one of Kaiser Czarski''s banks is robbed there is a circus in town. And as Jim knows full well, you don''t find out about a circus by going to it. You join it...

Bill was a peaceful farm boy until he was lured by the martial music of a passing recruitment sergeant, drugged, and made to enlist in the Empire Space Corps. His basic training is sheer hell, but somehow he manages to stay alive and achieve the rank of Fusetender 6th Class in the process. En route to an engagement with the lizard-like Chingers, Bill''s spaceship is involved in a supreme contest and by accident Bill is the man who saves the ship and wins the day. A grateful Galaxy awards him its highest accolade, the Purple Dart, to be presented by the Emperor himself on the fabulous aluminium-covered capital planet, Helior. And then his adventures really start to take off in the most bizarre and nastily surprising ways...

Bill would give his right arm to defend his Emperor against the alien Chingers - which is lucky seeing as he has two of them... War demands sacrifices, and if you''ve lot one left arm, have an artificial foot and a set of nifty surgically-implanted tusks, it''s a small price to pay for the privilege of being a hero. And Bill knows all about heroism - as part of a motley crew his new task is to track down the source of Chinger-controlled metal dragons that are making mincemeat out of humans...

He''s the perfect starship trooper: big, strong, and not too bright. He''s the perfect hero: willing to do almost anything to save his neck (it''s one of the body parts that''s still his own.)Tsuris, the Mystery Plane, has a mysterious secret weapon, and Bill must get it. But Bill has something the Tsurisians want. They have a lot of brains, but not enough bodies. They''ll take any body that comes along - and put one of their brains in it!Can Bill escape with his own brain? Can he find the secret weapon? Can he get a drink?

He''s the perfect Spaceship Trooper: big, strong, and completely brainwashed. He''s the perfect hero: willing to do almost anything to save his neck (perhaps one of the only body parts that''s still his own.)Bill is in the hospital, vainly hoping for a real foot to replace the satyr''s foot he''s been lumbered with. Not that he has anything against satyrs - at least not until one grabs him by the foot and pulls him under the ocean. Into a world of unspeakable and endless pleasures! Roaming this dimension of primordial desires, Bill faces dragons and gunslingers for the sake of true love - and a really good beer!

BARWORLD! For all the years that BILL had served in the Troopers, with all the hard beds, hard heads and no creds, any booze on offer was probably embalming fluid, or worse. BARWORLD! An assignment there promised bubbly, brandy and beer galore - enough to give BILL''s right arms (both of them) at last some idea of just what they were for. But that was before Uncle Nancy''s Cross-Dressing Emporium. And the Time/Space Resonation Nexus. And the Hippy from Hell. They were enough to completely alter a person''s perceptions of reality. And, like, totally bum him out.

BILL - the perfect Starship Trooper: big, brawny, and brainwashed. Possessor of two right arms (impressive when it comes to saluting) and a foot that is threatening to turn into something more suited to being an umbrella stand than anything that could be squeezed into a size 11 sneaker. BILL - a perfect recruit for the good ship Bounty, bound for the Chinger war and carrying a cargo of as nice a company of homicidal misfits and maniacs as you could wish to meet outside of a penitentiary asylum (which is where they''ve just come from). BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO - he''s back, he''s bad and about to meet the most hideous alien lifeform of his entire career. He''d do anything to save his skin without rocking the boat - but mutiny? On the Bounty?

BILL - the army''s made him what he is today - the perfect Starship Trooper, proud possess of two right arms and a lockerful of feet suitable for every occasion. BILL - this time he''s really put his foot (the Swiss-Army one with the special attachments, secret compartments, collapsible mess-kit and condom dispenser) right in it. BILL''s been volunteered to join a suicide squad run by Captain Cadaver to the well-known hell-hole planet of Eyerack. The orders are DEATH OR GLORY - and GLORY made a point of never returning the invitation to the war. So. Can this really be IT? The Long Goodbye? Zero Hour? Harmonicas at dawn? The end of a brilliantly undistinguished career of military mishaps? What can I tell you? This IS BILL''s final incoherent adventure!

James Bolivar ''Slippery Jim'' diGriz, Special Corps agent, master conman and interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog with his lovely, vivacious wife Angelina on the luxury planet Moolaplenty when long-lost Cousin Elmo arrives. And Cousin Elmo''s not alone: he''s got a ship full of porcuswine and their keepers, and they''re all looking for a new home. And before he''s even finished his first cocktail, his bank account''s been drained and he and Angelina are off wandering the stars on a sabotaged ship.

In this darkly satiric work Harry Harrison brings his most famous character out of retirement for a grand tour of the galaxy, cocktail in hand, his luscious wife by his side, a smile on his lips and larceny in his heart. He''s in search of adventure, gravitons, and a way to get the porcuswine out of his life ... for ever!

Trapped in the confines of their fragile lifeship, a tiny band of aliens and humans faces the awesome challenge of survival after the mysterious explosion of a giant spaceship.Giles Steel, a member of Earth''s master race, assumes responsibility for erupting tempers, the dwindling food supply...and the saboteur whose ugly work has already begun!

Someone was tampering with time, altering the past to eliminate the present, fading people out of existence into a timeless limbo.One of the victims was Angelina, the lovely, lethal wife of James Bolivar di Griz - better known as the Stainless Steel Rat. That put Slippery Jim on the trail of the villains, a trail that went back to 1984 and an ancient nation called the United States of America. The Stainless Steel Rat was determined to rescue his wife. And before he was through he''d thrown dozens of centuries through time in both directions. But then he didn''t have much choice: to save Angelina he had to save the world. Again.

You can''t keep a good rat down, not one as slippery as Jim di Griz, alias the Stainless Steel Rat. And you can''t keep his nose out of trouble either.Jim and the lethal, luscious Angelina owe themselves a honeymoon and Paraiso-Aqui looks like the place. Settled long ago by voyagers from the southern continent of Earth (or Dirt as it was known) Paraiso is warm and easy. But all is not well in paradise. The serpentine tyrant General Julio Zapilote is about to sail back into office in another rigged election, and the chance to scupper him is just too good for Jim to miss. Corruption, bribery, graft and chicanery - for the Rat it''s just like coming home.

Young Jim diGriz has but one ambition in life - to become a master criminal, perhaps the greatest that his backwater homeworld, Bit O''Heaven, has ever seen. So that he can learn the ropes, he has to mix with the right people - or rather the wrong people. And for this kind of on-the-job training the best place to meet the worst villains is in prison. But even for a customer as slippery as Jim, getting behind bars isn''t easy.So Jim does a bank job, very badly, with the avowed intention of getting himself nicked . . .

Slippery Jim diGriz is in the process of robbing the new Mint on Paskonjak when the heist goes terribly wrong. Threatened with a horrific death, Slippery Jim is allowed to cut a deal with the Galactic League: voyage to the planet Liokukae and bring back a missing artifact - the only known evidence of alien life-forms found in 32,000 years of galactic exploration. For diGriz there are a few catches. One is Liokukae itself - a dumping ground for the League''s misfits, murderers, maniacs, and the incurably obnoxious. Another is a little matter of life and death. To ensure the utterly untrustworthy diGriz''s cooperation, the League has given him a slow-acting poison, allowing him thirty days in which to succeed . . . or die. Now the Stainless Steel Rat is on his way to a world that is hurtling backward down the evolutionary scale - a land of fanatic, goat-herding Fundamentaloids, murderous Machmen, and a rusty guru named Iron John. DiGriz has developed an almost perfect cover: a four-member rock band that has a way of giving its audiences what they want to hear. But while the days tick away and diGriz''s life expectancy lowers, the mission evolves from finding an artifact to liberating a planet . . . which is a tune the Stainless Steel Rat most certainly knows how to sing.

Assembled here are fourteen of Harrison''s best, spanning time and space from the England of old to empires millennia from now. Among the stories included are "The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat," in which the cops have finally caught up with an aging Slippery Jim DiGriz; "Roommates," the original basis for the movie Soylent Green; and twelve more galaxy-spanning classics! From the bestselling West of Eden trilogy to Bill, The Galactic Hero and its sequels, from the Deathworld series to the Stainless Steel Rat books, Harry Harrison''s career is a series of landmarks. Stainless Steel Visions is another: his first major collection of short fiction.

Sinister religions, missing physicists, super strings and retarded entropy; it''s all in a day''s work for Slippery Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, the Universe''s greatest ever thief and con artist. But this time the stakes are rather higher than even Slippery Jim is used to. His wife Angelina has disappeared and he has nothing to go on except a pool of blood and a severed hand (formerly belonging to a physicist of stellar repute) - and the fact that she has expressed an interest in The Temple of Eternal Truth, a cult offering a sneak peek at heaven - for a price.

But there''s a job to do and the Stainless Steel Rat is the man to do it. After all, the devil makes work for idle hands...

''Set a thief to catch a thief'' goes the old saying. And when you are the richest man in the Universe and someone is systematically robbing your various banks blind you''d better set the best thief ever to catch your thief. After all, even at four million credits a day plus expenses, you can afford him. Enter Slippery Jim DiGriz. And that''s how it all began for Slippery Jim and his wife, the ever deadly Angelina; persuaded from a life of stockmarket dabbling and picnicking by the hover tanks, hard cash and outright flattery of undoubtedly the richest and probably the oldest man alive; Imperetrix Von Kaiser-Czarski. It would have seemed rude to not take the job and after barely four weeks (at four million a day) of watching the latest in computers (courtesy of son James) sift through the available evidence Jim has his first lead. Each time one of Kaiser Czarski''s banks is robbed there is a circus in town. And as Jim knows full well, you don''t find out about a circus by going to it. You join it...

Bill was a peaceful farm boy until he was lured by the martial music of a passing recruitment sergeant, drugged, and made to enlist in the Empire Space Corps. His basic training is sheer hell, but somehow he manages to stay alive and achieve the rank of Fusetender 6th Class in the process. En route to an engagement with the lizard-like Chingers, Bill''s spaceship is involved in a supreme contest and by accident Bill is the man who saves the ship and wins the day. A grateful Galaxy awards him its highest accolade, the Purple Dart, to be presented by the Emperor himself on the fabulous aluminium-covered capital planet, Helior. And then his adventures really start to take off in the most bizarre and nastily surprising ways...

Bill would give his right arm to defend his Emperor against the alien Chingers - which is lucky seeing as he has two of them... War demands sacrifices, and if you''ve lot one left arm, have an artificial foot and a set of nifty surgically-implanted tusks, it''s a small price to pay for the privilege of being a hero. And Bill knows all about heroism - as part of a motley crew his new task is to track down the source of Chinger-controlled metal dragons that are making mincemeat out of humans...

He''s the perfect starship trooper: big, strong, and not too bright. He''s the perfect hero: willing to do almost anything to save his neck (it''s one of the body parts that''s still his own.)Tsuris, the Mystery Plane, has a mysterious secret weapon, and Bill must get it. But Bill has something the Tsurisians want. They have a lot of brains, but not enough bodies. They''ll take any body that comes along - and put one of their brains in it!Can Bill escape with his own brain? Can he find the secret weapon? Can he get a drink?

He''s the perfect Spaceship Trooper: big, strong, and completely brainwashed. He''s the perfect hero: willing to do almost anything to save his neck (perhaps one of the only body parts that''s still his own.)Bill is in the hospital, vainly hoping for a real foot to replace the satyr''s foot he''s been lumbered with. Not that he has anything against satyrs - at least not until one grabs him by the foot and pulls him under the ocean. Into a world of unspeakable and endless pleasures! Roaming this dimension of primordial desires, Bill faces dragons and gunslingers for the sake of true love - and a really good beer!

BARWORLD! For all the years that BILL had served in the Troopers, with all the hard beds, hard heads and no creds, any booze on offer was probably embalming fluid, or worse. BARWORLD! An assignment there promised bubbly, brandy and beer galore - enough to give BILL''s right arms (both of them) at last some idea of just what they were for. But that was before Uncle Nancy''s Cross-Dressing Emporium. And the Time/Space Resonation Nexus. And the Hippy from Hell. They were enough to completely alter a person''s perceptions of reality. And, like, totally bum him out.

BILL - the perfect Starship Trooper: big, brawny, and brainwashed. Possessor of two right arms (impressive when it comes to saluting) and a foot that is threatening to turn into something more suited to being an umbrella stand than anything that could be squeezed into a size 11 sneaker. BILL - a perfect recruit for the good ship Bounty, bound for the Chinger war and carrying a cargo of as nice a company of homicidal misfits and maniacs as you could wish to meet outside of a penitentiary asylum (which is where they''ve just come from). BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO - he''s back, he''s bad and about to meet the most hideous alien lifeform of his entire career. He''d do anything to save his skin without rocking the boat - but mutiny? On the Bounty?

BILL - the army''s made him what he is today - the perfect Starship Trooper, proud possess of two right arms and a lockerful of feet suitable for every occasion. BILL - this time he''s really put his foot (the Swiss-Army one with the special attachments, secret compartments, collapsible mess-kit and condom dispenser) right in it. BILL''s been volunteered to join a suicide squad run by Captain Cadaver to the well-known hell-hole planet of Eyerack. The orders are DEATH OR GLORY - and GLORY made a point of never returning the invitation to the war. So. Can this really be IT? The Long Goodbye? Zero Hour? Harmonicas at dawn? The end of a brilliantly undistinguished career of military mishaps? What can I tell you? This IS BILL''s final incoherent adventure!