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I wouldn't be too hard on Laumer. Most SF books written recently are
just crap. And NO, this is not one of those "good old days" whines. The
books that seemed great in the 50s and 60s are clearly STILL great when
read today. Fair is fair. SF these days is an anemic, pathetic thing.
Each month I hope that Harlan Ellison will have come out of his
terrible slump and written something great again. Or just written
ANYTHING again. But each month the bookstores feature the same worn
books plus several new sword-and-sorcery pieces of *hit that no one
with an IQ over 70 could stand.
Ah, well ...
Yes, Laumer wrote a lot of fun stuff in the 60s. His "A Plague of
Pythons" was one. I started reading it one Friday PM after I got back
to my dorm room in college. At 3 the next morning I finished it, having
skipped supper, the bathroom, even moving off the bed in the
interim.
And every month I get the flier from the Sci Fi Book Club, with its two
new offerings that are, for the most part, eye-bulgingly badly written
"The Journal of Umptisquzt Land": 380 pages of badly written tripe
about some kid in an alternate universe of (yes) dragons and sorcerers,
who must single-handedly save not only his incompetent parents and
bimbo girlfriend, not to mention his planet, but
several other universes, using only his magic sword, the advise of an
enchanted talking dumpster, his pet talking, flying artichoke, and his
17-year-old courage, etc. etc. ...
Now I am depressed ...
ken
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| >I wouldn't be too hard on Laumer. Most SF books written recently are
>just crap. And NO, this is not one of those "good old days" whines. The
>books that seemed great in the 50s and 60s are clearly STILL great when
>read today. Fair is fair. SF these days is an anemic, pathetic thing.
The ones that are still around are still considered good. So, when you
compare the cream of the 50s and 60s to the whole spectrum of current
books, naturally the cream will look superior.
If, however, you compare the top 10% from the 50s and 60s to the top
10% of today's work, you'll most likely find similar numbers of good
books. Conversely, if you could go back to the 50s and 60s and look
at everything that was written then, you'd notice that then, as now,
there was an awful lot of dreck being sold.
It's like the lament you hear about antiques: "Boy, they sure don't
build 'em like this any more." Yes they do, they're just expensive.
All the crappy stuff that was built in the "good old days" is long
gone, so that only the very best remains to become an antique.
Sturgeon's Law applies today, and it applied in the 50s and 60s, too.
andrew
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| Article: 371
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews #30: Keith Laumer
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 23 Sep 93 01:58:59 GMT
Belated Reviews #30: Keith Laumer
Keith Laumer's writing career spanned three decades, but almost all his
better work appeared in the sixties, the first of those decades. He's
a second-tier writer: None of his works are outstanding, but some of it
comes close, and a good deal of it is solid, enjoyable story-telling.
"Dinosaur Beach" (****-) is his best book, IMO, a short but elegant time
travel novel. The 'back-history' of the novel is a history of successive
eras of time travel. The first era took no precautions and made a mess of
history. The second era took extensive precautions, and made a worse
mess. The third era attempted to undo the damage, and just made it worse
yet. I think you see the pattern. The hero of this story is Ravel, who
is a *fourth* era agent, which means that he and his are working to repair
the damage done by all the earlier eras -- as well as fighting agents of
all the earlier eras, who think they know better. It's a nicely crafted and
entertaining yarn of time loops within time loops and secrets within secrets.
There are about a dozen 'Retief' books, most of them collections of
humorous short stories about Jame Retief (not his full name), of the CDT
(Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne). It's really a one-joke series, but
it's a joke that Laumer tells well, and that stands retelling: The CDT is
a *very* broad satire on the American State Department at its worst,
always seeking to give aid and comfort to its enemies, always ignorant of
local realities, always exacerbating problems through appeasement just
when a show of firmness would make them go away. And Retief is forever
saving the day by ignoring policy and doing the sensible, or even heroic,
thing. (This does not make him popular within the Corps.) Stated this
baldly it doesn't sound like a basis for that many stories, but the
storytelling is deft, the situations and the aliens are amusing, the
sledgehammer satire can be ignored.
"Retief's War" (***+), a complete Retief novel, is my personal favorite
(largely because I prefer novels), though other readers may reasonably have
individual stories as their favorites. "Retief's War" takes place on the
planet Quopp, which is so rich in metals that the life forms which have
evolved -- hundreds of different intelligent species -- are more machine
than animal. (The nearest thing they have to a hospital closely resembles
an auto repair shop, complete with a range of spare parts.) Unfortunately,
the latest Terran brainstorm involves putting a single species -- a
particularly unpopular one -- in power, and that species is already in
cahoots with the Terrans' arch enemies, the Groaci. It is up to Retief to
don the exoskeleton of leadership, and organize a rebellion before it's
too late. Amusing, entertaining, light-weight reading.
"Bolo" (***+) collects stories from another series of stories. The Bolos
are super-tanks, intelligent and self-motivated. In some of the stories
("The Night of the Trolls", "Courier") the Bolos are just big tanks for
the protagonists to overcome, but many of the best stories take their
power from the contradiction between Bolos as intelligent entities and
Bolos as supremely dangerous weapons of war. This is *not* military sf,
as the subgenre has come to evolve. (I won't swear that's true of the new
sharecropped Bolo stories, but they're not Laumer's.)
"Worlds of the Imperium" (***) is the first novel in yet a third series,
this a series of crosstime adventures. The Imperium is an Earth on which
crosstime travel was safely perfected. That world is also referred to as
BI-1 -- Blight Insular 1 -- the Blight being all that's left of the numerous
alternates that *didn't* perfect the invention safely enough. When the
Imperium finds itself under attack from BI-2 (a world almost destroyed by
a prolonged WWII), it conceives of a plan to replace the dictator of BI-2,
one Brion Bayard, with a duplicate. They find such a duplicate on our
world, BI-3. From there it's entertaining but unexceptional adventure
fiction, with Bayard fighting foes and fighting spies and ultimately
Getting The Girl.
There are a number of sequels which make better use of the possibilities
of the crosstime premise, but do a poorer job of story-telling. "The
Other Side of Time" (**+) pits the Imperium against a distant crosstime-
capable civilization that diverged *way* back, and which considers Homo
Sapiens an embarrassment to the genus. "Assignment in Nowhere" (**+) is
another decent yarn, about a conflict between a descendent of the
Plantagenets and a descendent of an enemy of that house, which threatens
to destroy the lines that survived the Blight. (And "Zone Yellow" () is
Laumer's worst book.)
There are a good number of Laumer novels which are just good, readable
adventure fiction. "Planet Run" (***), coauthored with Gordon R. Dickson,
is actually a Western in disguise. Captain Henry is the old hand,
blackmailed out of retirement for one more run. Larry Bartholomew, the
son of the blackmailer, is the wet-behind-the-ears sidekick. It works:
Laumer's stories and Dickson's have a lot in common. "Earthblood" (***),
coauthored with Rosel George Brown, follows the adventures of a young
Terran in a future galaxy in which Terrans are few, and not very popular.
The youngster eventually rises to command a pirate ship (Terrans are very
plucky and always triumph through talent or determination, it seems) and
uses it to seek out Terra itself.
There are other Laumer books I've found enjoyable, but most of them are
merely adequate -- and there are adequate books being written all the time.
My advice, if you haven't read Laumer's books and are curious, is to try
some of his better ones, and then decide whether you wish to read on.
%A Laumer, Keith
%T Dinosaur Beach
%T Retief's War
%T Bolo
%T Worlds of the Imperium
Standard introduction and disclaimer for Belated Reviews follows.
Belated Reviews cover science fiction and fantasy of earlier decades.
They're for newer readers who have wondered about the older titles on the
shelves, or who are interested in what sf/f was like in its younger days.
The emphasis is on helping interested readers identify books to try first,
not on discussing the books in depth.
A general caveat is in order: Most of the classics of yesteryear have not
aged well. If you didn't encounter them back when, or in your early teens,
they will probably not give you the unforced pleasure they gave their
original audiences. You may find yourself having to make allowances for
writing you consider shallow or politics you consider regressive. When I
name specific titles, I'll often rate them using the following scale:
**** Recommended.
*** An old favorite that hasn't aged well, and wouldn't get a good
reception if it were written today. Enjoyable on its own terms.
** A solid book, worth reading if you like the author's works.
* Nothing special.
Additional disclaimers: Authors are not chosen for review in any particular
order. The reviews don't attempt to be comprehensive. No distinction is
made between books which are still in print and books which are not.
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]
The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green,
much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all
right to buy it.--Scott Jones
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