Keith Laumer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Keith Laumer
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Laumer c. 1966
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| Born | June 9, 1925 Syracuse, New York, United States |
| Died | January 23, 1993 (aged 67) |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story author |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Notable works | Bolo, Retief |
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 United States Air Force and a diplomat in the United States Foreign Service. His older brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Laumer's The Other Side of Time). Frank Laumer, their youngest brother, is a historian and writer.
Early life
Keith Laumer was born in 1925 in Syracuse, New York. He attended Indiana University, 1943–44, and then served in the United States Army Air Forces in the Second World War in Europe. He later attended Stockholm University, 1948–49, and then received a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1950 from the University of Illinois. He served twice in the US Air Force, 1953–56 and 1960–65, attaining the rank of captain in the latter tour. In between the two terms in the military, Laumer was a member of the US Foreign Service in Burma.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Laumer returned to Florida and purchased a small two-acre island on a lake in Hernando County near Weeki Wachee. He would reside there for the rest of his life.
Around this time he turned his attention to writing, specifically science fiction; his first work, a short story, was published in April 1959.
Writing career
Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo and Retief stories. Stories from the former chronicle the evolution of super 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 US Foreign Service. In an interview with Paul Walker of Luna Monthly, Laumer stated, "I had no shortage of iniquitous memories of the Foreign Service."
Laumer's other adventures often included the subjects of time travel and alternate worlds, such as found in A Trace of Memory, Dinosaur Beach and the Imperium series.
Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations ("In the Queue", was nominated for both), and A Plague of Demons (1965) received a nomination for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.
During his peak years of 1959–1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer. His novels and stories tend to follow one of three patterns:
- fast-paced, straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on lone-wolf, latent superhuman protagonists, self-sacrifice, and transcendence
- broad, sometimes over-the-top, comedies
- experimental work verging on New Wave science fiction
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 Dream Makers Volume II (1983), 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 published that had been unpublished at the time of the stroke.
In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing. However, the quality of his work suffered, and his career declined. In later years, Laumer also re-used scenarios and characters from earlier works to create new books, which one critic felt limited their appeal:
Alas, Retief to the Rescue doesn't seem so much like a new Retief novel, but a kind of Cuisinart mélange of past books.
His Bolo creations were popular enough that other authors have written standalone science fiction about them.
An anthology "Created by Keith Laumer", Dangerous Vegetables, appeared in 1998. Actually edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, the book's introduction (by Ben Bova) said the book was Laumer's idea, but that he had died without completing it.
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 Aeromodeller. 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.
