#keith laumer

[beentobeetle]

Legion … Legion stop … Legion seriously I don’t think that’s helping … Legion quit it there’s no way you’re shaking the whimsy out of him it’s a fruitless act man …

[humanoidhistory]

Jack Gaughan's cover art for The Long Twilight by Keith Laumer, 1969.

[multiverse-of-misfits]

I really need more people to know about the Bolos series.

Then you'll understand why I so badly want to hug a bunch of giant sentient battle tanks

[that-dinopunk-guy]

The Christmas season (really, the whole stretch from November to the beginning of April) is always rough on my depression, but at least today I got another pile of used sci-fi paperbacks in the mail to add to my growing hoard.

These I got because I enjoyed A Plague of Demons so I wanted to check out more of Laumer's work...but mainly because of the Wayne Barlowe covers. (I've also ordered a Barlowe cover copy of Plague, but it hasn't arrived yet.)

I've been meaning to check out the Lensman series for like ever. I went for this set because it had the coolest covers, and won it in a grueling auction. (I think there was only one other bidder. I ended up paying like fifteen bucks.)

Mesklin is a really cool worldbuilding concept, so I got some Hal Clement. This set actually had two different editions of Ocean on Top, so I will be donating the one with the lamer cover to my grandmother's used book store. (I've ended up with a lot of duplicate copies of books to donate, actually...)

I'd never heard of Elizabeth Moon and got these totally on a whim, and now I've gotta get Sporting Chance and Once a Hero to have the complete Familias Regnant series.

I feel like I should probably lay off these purchases for a while after this; they always seem to arrive in huge batches and I'm sure my mail lady is getting sick of having to deal with all those boxes. (I didn't even post the thirty-two other books that came the other day.)

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade by Keith Laumer (1976)?

yes

no

I've read parts of it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onOct 22, 2024

[bracketsoffear]

Carnage In New York (David Michelinie and Dean Wesley Smith) "Spider-Man rescues Dr. Eric Catrall, a scientist, from government agents. Simultaneously, serial killer Cletus Kasady is brought to New York to undergo an experiment that would purge him of the Carnage symbiote, which is bonded to his bloodstream. Catrall infiltrates the experiment and in the confusion Carnage escapes, taking Catrall with him. When Catrall turns up in jail, Spider-Man learns he had invented a chemical that drives people insane with bloodlust, and the government wants it back in order to weaponize it. Even worse, the serum is now in Carnage's possession. Spider-Man is forced to go toe-to-talon with one of his most dangerous foes to retrieve the serum, which could make all of New York just as bloodthirsty as Carnage himself."

Bolo (Keith Laumer et. al.) ""Bolos might fail. They might die and be destroyed. But they did not surrender, and they never — ever — quit."

A series of stories, originally by Keith Laumer, that were later expanded into a Shared Universe by other authors. They detail the exploits of the Bolo, autonomous AI tanks that are supposed to have evolved from the standard main battle tank of the 20th century.

These aren't your normal tanks. For one, their designers decided that bigger was better, and since the only thing that could really take down a Bolo was another Bolo, they just kept building the Bolos bigger and bigger, to the point where even the stealth tanks mass 1,500 tons. Or in some novels the Mark XXXIII weighs 32,000 tons.

There are plenty of examples of why this is Slaughter, but the aptly-named Final War, culminating in a mutual campaign of total extermination between humans and Melconians that turned a whole spiral arm of the Milky Way into a lifeless waste of dead or hopelessly contaminated planets, takes the cake. It is notable that plans of Operation Ragnarok, the human half of the equation of genocide, were based on a scenario initially created to illustrate utter madness of such campaign. Even the eponymous sapient supertanks start cracking under the weight of their orders by the end, succumbing to bloodlust. When one of the very few surviving Bolos, Shiva, reawakens, he is horrified by the atrocities that he himself had not been above committing under the pretense of following orders."

Slaughter Leitner Redemption Bracket Round 1 Bout 1

Carnage In New York (David Michelinie and Dean Wesley Smith)

Bolo (Keith Laumer et. al.)

Voting ended onOct 1, 2024

[all-action-all-picture]

1973 ad for Worlds Unknown No. 2 from Marvel. Adaptations of A Gun for Dinosaur! by L. Sprague deCamp and Doorstep by Keith Laumer. This promo image, by Alan Weiss and John Romita, was also used as the cover.

[head-vampire]

The Time Bender by Keith Laumer (1966)

Art by Rowena Morrill