Profile of Keith Laumer on Famous Like Me

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.

Writing Career

Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo stories, concerning self-aware juggernaut-sized tanks with overwhelming firepower in the range of Megatons/second, and for his satirical Retief series, about a two-fisted diplomat who is constantly having to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder; the latter were greatly influenced by his long-time career in the United States 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 at least competent. His novels tended to follow one of two patterns:

• straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence

• broad comedies, sometimes of the explicitly over the top variety

In 1971, Laumer suffered a stroke while working on the novel The Ultimax Man. After the stroke, 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. During this period, a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke were published.

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

Bibliography

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 Compleat Bolo (1990)

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)

Imperium

Books set in the Imperium mythos: a continuum of parallel worlds policed by the Imperium, a government based in an alternate Stockholm.

• 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)

Time Trap

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

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)

The Avengers (novelizations of the TV series)

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

The Invaders (novelizations of the TV series)

• The Invaders (UK title The Meteor Men, A Story of Invaders published as by Anthony LeBaron) (1967)
• Enemies From Beyond (1967)

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)

External link

• Keith Laumer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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