James Nicoll Reviews

1971’s Retief of the CDT is the seventh¹ book featuring Keith Laumer’s two-fisted man of interstellar diplomacy, Jaime Retief.

Retief is a mid-ranked member of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne (CDT); he is sufficiently lofty in rank yet expendable enough to be entrusted with important tasks by his immediate superior Ben Magnan. Worst case, Retief dies ignominiously for reasons beyond his control while Magnan heaps all the blame on Retief.

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Keith Laumer’s 1976 The Best of Keith Laumer is a collection of science fiction stories. 

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1962’s Worlds of the Imperium is the first of Keith Laumer’s Imperium novels.

American diplomat Brion Bayard is stalked through the streets of Stockholm. Brion’s efforts to elude his pursuers are energetic but unsuccessful. He is overpowered and carried off. Nobody on Earth will ever see him again.

Nobody on his Earth, that is….

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The Keith Laumer and Rosel George Brown 1966 collaboration Earthblood is a standalone space opera. 

Although Roan’s adopted father Raff was only a mutant human, and his adopted mother Bella a lowly Yill. Roan himself was a true-blooded pure-strain Terran — something not seen in the galaxy since the Imperial Terran Navy was swept from the skies by the Niss, fivet housand years earlier. Where Roan came from, and how he found his way to a backwater world like Tambool, neither Raff nor Bella cang uess. What they do know is they love their adopted son and intend to raise him as best they can.

But in a galaxy populated by mutants and aliens, can there be room for even one true human?

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Although Laumer is probably best known for his Retief and his Bolo stories or perhaps the medical calamity that overshadowed the majority of his career, this particular book is significant to me because it happens to be the very first Laumer I ever encountered, spotted during of my covert forays up into the adult section of Waterloo Public Library.

Right after the superfluous prologue we get a hint Things Have Changed from the date: Sarday, Ma 35, 2190. Ban Tarleton is a loyal, excessively loyal, officer in the United Planetary Navy, taking the claims of his superiors at face value and interpreting what he sees in light of the lies he has been raised on. 

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