Today, June 9, is the birthday of Keith Laumer (1925-1993). Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer back in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Laumer is best known for the Retief series about a two-fisted diplomat and the Bolo series about sentient tanks.
He is pretty much out of print these days. That’s a shame, because I think his nonseries work is some of his best, especially at shorter lengths.
One of Laumer’s favorite subgenres was time travel, and he wrote a number of time travel stories. Preeminent among them was Dinosaur Beach.
Laumer also tended to write military sceince fiction, which is a Duh! since he created the Bolos. He was friends with Gordon R. Dickson, and they collaborated on the novel Planet Run.
About twenty or so years ago, Baen reprinted many of Laumer’s works in omnibus editions edited by Eric Flint. Those are worth picking up if you can find them. That shouldn’t be hard. I jsut checked and found out I missed one. Picked it up for just under ten bucks.
Read a lot of Laumer back in the day, though almost exclusively Retief. Good fun, though I’m curious how it holds up
I had trouble getting into Retief and haven’t tried any of those stories in nearly a quarter cnetury. I have the Baen collected Retief which I think is everything. I’m going to give those stories another try soon.
I’ve been collecting the BOLO paperbacks. One to go.
Though, admittedly, I’ve read more BOLO stories from all the other authors than Laumer himself.
Baen’s “WORLD BREAKERS” anthology was unofficial BOLO. More sentient tank tales.
Laumer wrote surprsingly few BOLO stories, at least compared to the numer other authors have written.