Anyone rifling through my collection of colour slides would stub his pupils on a considerable number of photographs of a swallowing man. These slides were taken over a number of years and show the swallowing man in a number of places: Copenhagen, Elsinore, Sweden, Henley-on-Thames, Oxford, Trieste, Jugoslavia, Tom Boardman's Place. Although the gestures may perhaps grow a little obscener from year to year, the swallowing man never seems to grow any older or balder. It is hard to see his face, for it is usually partly concealed behind a mighty sandwich, a meat pie, a flaming hot pepper, or a big glass full of the liquor of the country.

The swallowing man - not to keep you in suspense any longer - is Harry Harrison, our Guest of Honour; or perhaps it should be, for this breezy personality, our Gust of Honour; and one of Science Fiction's greatest and nicest personalities. We would be here all day if I were to list all his virtues, but there are a few things that must be said. Perhaps the most important is that behind that flaming pepper, that hamburger, that stein of beer, lurks a shrewd intellect that has in its time covered almost all the activities of the S.F. world. Harry makes the rest of us professionals look like a rabble of amateurs. He entered the field by doing illustrations, was editing a couple of magazines at an incredibly early age (thirteen, wasn't it, Harry?), had his first story published in Damon Knight's late-lamented magazine "Worlds Beyond" (1951), and has since then slowly climbed in eminence as a writer; on the way he has written many episodes in the stormy career of Flash Gordon and run one of his best novels as a serial in "Boy's World".

Although I must admit that Harry seemed to at harsh, unjust and imperceptive as an editor (honest, Harry, "Nebula" printed that story later, so it can't have been all bad), I have only admiration for his fiction. Although Harry looks so much older than I, in fact we are almost the same age, and we were both nourished as boys in the S.F. of the Early Forties, that golden time when Clarke was still beginning, Heinlein was still intelligible,Sturgeon was still sane, van Vogt was still mad, Asimov was still writing, Moorcock was still teething, and so on. It seems to me now, older and a little jaded, that only Harry still brings into his fiction the enormous gusto that moved his distinguished predecessors. For me, when "Analog" came along, "Astounding" quietly died; and the old skill and savagery only has resurrection when Harrison writes. He writes not like an angel but like a demon. As the devil has all the best tunes, so Harry has all the best titles. Like Graham Greene, Harry has the knack of the true writer in,inventing an absolutely incontrovertible title. Who has ever rivalled a label like "Stainless Steel Rat"? Answer: only the author of "Deathworld", "Sense of Obligation", "The Ethical Engineer" and "Bill the Galactic Hero".

A snide remark I'd like to make is this. Most writers of science fiction and most fans write or read about great swaggering heroes hurtling through the galaxies and discomfiting, with blaster or pungent phrase, alien and maiden alike. Yet in real life, they are quiet little shy chaps who would hardly dare think of two ways to insult their own mothers. Harry is different. When he is around, you know it; and since his presence infects me with euphoria, I love it that way. The swallowing man also happens to give out all the time. He's a good talker, a crazy joker, a huge drinker, a tough traveller, a hard worker, a great lover, a dirty Esperantist, and a sack of other things too humorous to mention. That's Harry the Galactic Handful, and it's a wonderful idea that he has brought his mercurial wife Joan over to stop him tearing Brum apart.

Harry is such an old and revolting friend of mine that I'd like to end on a sentimental note. This strange American with Russian blood in his veins who lives in Denmark, loves all that is most awful in Britain, eats Mexican and Indian food, has business connections with Tokyo and fan clubs in Italy, not to mention holidays in Hungary and the Arctic Circle, is something of an international figure or I don't know one if I see one.

What I do know is that we do ourselves an honour by choosing him to be Guest of Honour. Harry leads the field, and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

...........Brian W. Aldiss.

April 1965