The Stainless Steel Rat series is one of my all-time favorites. Also, he inspired me to learn a bit of Esperanto when I was quite young. I did a mail-in course I found advertised at the Huntington Beach public library, and ended up wondering why English supplanted French as the international language, instead of Esperanto. Then again, if shit like this was decided by common sense, we might have been playing on 100 meter football fields for the past 50 years.