Keith Laumer

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A Plague of Demons typifies Laumer's fast-paced approach, with a protagonist given super human powers by surgery battling against alien dog-creatures and their apparently 'human' allies.
A Plague of Demons typifies Laumer's fast-paced approach, with a protagonist given super human powers by surgery battling against alien dog-creatures and their apparently 'human' allies.

John Keith Laumer (June 9, 1925 – January 23, 1993) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full time writer, he was an officer in the US Air Force and a US diplomat.

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[edit] Writing career

Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo stories and his satirical Retief series. The former chronicles the evolution of juggernaut-sized tanks that eventually become self-aware through the constant improvement resulting from centuries of intermittent war against various alien races. The latter deals with the adventures of a cynical spacefaring diplomat who constantly has to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder. The Retief stories were greatly influenced by Laumer's earlier career in the United States Foreign Service. In an interview with Paul Walker of Luna Monthly, Laumer states "I had no shortage of iniquitous memories of the Foreign Service."

Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one of them, "In the Queue", received nominations for both) and his novel A Plague of Demons was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.

During the peak years of 1959-1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer whose work was always entertaining. His novels tend to follow one of two patterns:

  • broad comedies, sometimes of the over the top variety

In 1971, Laumer suffered a stroke while working on the novel The Ultimax Man. As a result, he was unable to write for a few years. As he explained in an interview with Charles Platt published in The Dream Makers (1987), he refused to accept the doctors' diagnosis. He came up with an alternative explanation and developed an alternative (and very painful) treatment program. Although he was unable to write in the early 1970s, he had a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke published during that time.

In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing. However, the quality of his work dropped precipitously.[citation needed] Laumer also re-edited many of his earlier works, often to their detriment[citation needed], when they were reprinted in the 1980s.

[edit] Model airplane designer

Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the US magazines Air Trails, Model Airplane News and Flying Models, as well as the British Aero Modeler. He published one book on the subject, How to Design and Build Flying Models in 1960. His later designs were mostly gas-powered free flight planes, and had a whimsical charm with names to match, like the "Twin Lizzie" and the "Lulla-Bi". His designs are still being revisited, reinvented and built today.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Bolo

Books concerning Bolo war machines: self-aware tanks.

  • Bolo (1976)
  • Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade (1986)
  • Rogue Bolo (1986)
  • The Stars Must Wait (1990)
  • The Complete Bolo (1990)

[edit] Retief

Satirical adventures of Retief, the galactic diplomat.

  • Envoy to New Worlds (1963)
  • Galactic Diplomat (1965)
  • Retief's War (1966)
  • Retief and the Warlords (1968)
  • Retief of the CDT (1971)
  • Retief: Emissary to the Stars (1975)
  • Retief at Large (1978)
  • Retief Unbound (1979)
  • Retief: Diplomat at Arms (1982)
  • Retief to the Rescue (1983)
  • The Return of Retief (1984)
  • Retief (1986)
  • Retief in the Ruins (1986)
  • Retief and the Pangalactic Pageant of Pulchritude (1986)
  • Reward for Retief (1989)
  • Retief and the Rascals (1993)
  • Retief! (posthumous, ed. Eric Flint) (2002)

[edit] Imperium

Books set in the Imperium mythos: a continuum of parallel worlds policed by the Imperium, a government based in an alternate Stockholm. In the science fiction novel Worlds of the Imperium the Imperium are a race or culture that take place during a time of Imperialism mimicking the 18th century of France. The author Keith Laumer writes about the main character, Bayard, who goes after an evil dictator of another world by using an interdimensional space traveling device called the Blight.

  • Worlds of the Imperium (1962)
  • The Other Side of Time (1965)
  • Assignment in Nowhere (1968)
  • Beyond the Imperium (omnibus edition of The Other Side of Time and Assignment in Nowhere) (1981)
  • Zone Yellow (1990)
  • Imperium (omnibus edition of Worlds of the Imperium, Assignment in Nowhere and The Other Side of Time, ed. Eric Flint) (2005)

[edit] Time Trap

  • Time Trap (1970)
  • Back to the Time Trap (1992)

[edit] Lafayette O'Leary

A comic equivalent of the Imperium mythos, in which the hero has the ability to travel to feudal/magical alternate Earths.

  • The Time Bender (1966)
  • The World Shuffler (1970)
  • The Shape Changer (1972)
  • The Galaxy Builder (1984)

[edit] The Avengers (novelizations of the TV series)

  • #5: The Afrit Afair (1968)
  • #6: The Drowned Queen (1968)
  • #7: The Gold Bomb (1968)

[edit] The Invaders (novelizations of the TV series)

  • The Invaders (UK title The Meteor Men, A Story of Invaders published as by Anthony LeBaron) (1967)
  • Army of the Undead (UK title The Halo Highway published as by Rafe Bernard) (1967)
  • Enemies From Beyond (1967)

[edit] Standalone Books

  • How to Design and Build Flying Models (non-fiction) (1960, revised in 1970)
  • A Trace of Memory (1962)
  • The Great Time Machine Hoax (1964)
  • A Plague of Demons (1965)
  • Embassy (non-genre) (1965)
  • Catastrophe Planet (1966)
  • Earthblood (with Rosel George Brown) (1966)
  • The Monitors (filmed in 1969) (1966)
  • Galactic Odyssey (1967)
  • Nine by Laumer (collection) (1967)
  • Planet Run (with Gordon R. Dickson) (1967)
  • The Day Before Forever and Thunderhead (two short novels) (1968)
  • Greylorn (collection) (1968)
  • It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy (collection) (1968)
  • The Long Twilight (1969)
  • The Seeds of Gonyl (If magazine, never published as a book) (1969)
  • The House in November (collection) (1970)
  • The Star Treasure (1970)
  • Deadfall (alternative title Fat Chance, filmed as Peeper in 1975) (1971)
  • Dinosaur Beach (1971)
  • Once There Was a Giant (collection) (1971)
  • The Big Show (collection) (1972)
  • The Infinite Cage (1972)
  • Night of Delusions (1972)
  • Timetracks (collection) (1972)
  • The Glory Game (1973)
  • The Undefeated (collection) (1974)
  • The Best of Keith Laumer (collection) (1976)
  • The Ultimax Man (1978)
  • The Breaking Earth (revision of Catastrophe Planet) (1981)
  • Star Colony (1982)
  • Knight of Delusions (revision of Night of Delusions) (1982)
  • Chrestomathy (collection including many excerpts) (1984)
  • End as a Hero (1985)
  • The Other Sky and The House in November (1985)
  • Alien Minds (collection including many excerpts) (1991)
  • Judson's Eden (1991)
  • Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side (posthumous omnibus, ed. Eric Flint) (2001)
  • Odyssey (posthumous omnibus, ed. Eric Flint) (2002)
  • A Plague of Demons and Other Stories (posthumous omnibus, ed. Eric Flint) (2003)
  • Legions of Space (posthumous omnibus, ed. Eric Flint) (2004)

[edit] External links

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