My boss leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and gave me Lecture Forty-four on Company Duty and My Troubles. "This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, when it really should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are made to last forever -- or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down, it is never an accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter of just plugging in a new part." He was telling me -- the guy who did the job while he sat back on his fat paycheck in an air-conditioned office. Harrison was (with Brian Aldiss) the co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Aldiss called him "a constant peer and great family friend." His friend Michael Carroll said, "Imagine Pirates of the Caribbean or Raiders of the Lost Ark, and picture them as science-fiction novels. They're rip-roaring adventures, but they're stories with a lot of heart."