Keith Laumer
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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 U.S. Air Force and a U.S. diplomat. His brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Keith's The Other Side of Time).
[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 warfare 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, with his novels tending to follow one of two patterns:
- fast-paced, straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on lone-wolf, latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence
- 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 suffered and his career declined (Piers Anthony, How Precious Was That While, 2002). In later years Laumer also reused scenarios and characters from his earlier works to create "new" books, which some critics felt was to their detriment:
Alas, Retief to the Rescue doesn't seem so much like a new Retief novel, but a kind of Cuisnart mélange of past books.
-- Somtow Sucharitkul (Washington Post, Mar 27, 1983. p. BW11)
His Bolo creations were popular enough that other authors have written standalone science-fiction novels about them.
[edit] Model airplane designer
Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the U.S. 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. Co-author book credits also indicated at Bolo Self-aware Tank.
- Bolo (1976)
- Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade (1986)
- Rogue Bolo (1986)
- The Stars Must Wait (1990)
- The Compleat 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: ambassador to space; seven incidents of the Corps diplomatique terrestrienne (1969)
- Retief of the CDT (1971)
- Retief's Ransom (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] Mad Dog Graphics: Keith Laumer's Retief (comic)
- #1, Policy (1987)
- #2, Sealed Orders (1987)
- #3, Protest Note (1987)
- #4, Saline Solution (1987)
- #5, Ultimatum (1988)
- #6, The forest in the Sky (1988)
[edit] Adventure Comics: Keith Laumer's Retief (comics)
- #1, The peace makers (1989)
- #2, Ballots and Bandits (1990)
- #3, Mechanical Advantage (1990)
- #4, Aide Memoire (1990)
- #5, Wicker Wonderland (1990)
[edit] Adventure Comics: Retief and the Warlords (comics)
[edit] Adventure Comics: Retief Diplomatic Immunity (comics)
[edit] Adventure Comics: Retief The Giant Killer (comics)
- #1, The Giant Killer (1991)
[edit] Adventure Comics: Retief Crime & Punishment (comics)
- #1, Crime & Punishment (1991)
[edit] Adventure Comics (comic)
- 1 Paperback
[edit] Imperium
Books set in the Imperium mythos: a continuum of parallel worlds policed by the Imperium, a government based in an alternate London. In the science fiction novel Worlds of the Imperium the Imperium are a race or culture that formed in an alterate history, where the American Revolution did not occur and the British Empire and Germany merged into a unified empire in 1900. 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 Maxoni-Cocini field generator.
- 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
[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.
[edit] The Avengers (based on the TV series)
[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)
- The Frozen Planet (5 stories, title story by Keith Laumer) (1966)
- 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) (1969)
- 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 (1971)
- Deadfall (alternative title Fat Chance, filmed as Peeper in 1975) (1971)
- Dinosaur Beach (1971) (originally published as The time sweepers in 1969)
- 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)
- Beenie in Oz (with March Laumer, Tyler Jones, Michael J. Michanczyk) (1997)
- 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
- Keith Laumer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- A dedicated Keith Laumer website, with biography and forum
- A Bolo Web page
- Keith Laumer books at the Baen Free Library
- A Bolo web page by William Keith (author of novels in the Bolo universe)
- Steve Parker's review of Keith Laumer's work, including summaries of his work
