Bolo

 

By Keith Laumer

A short story collection about Bolos, an intelligent military machine similar to a tank.

• A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machine: exactly what the title says.
• The Night of the Trolls: Man comes out of suspended animation to discover a world turned upside down by war.
• Courier: Retief (of the CDT) is sent to stop an invasion of a human-settled world by an aliens.
• Field Test: War breaks out and a general decides it is an opportunity to test the newest weapon, a Bolo Fighting Machine.
• The Last Command: A long-buried Bolo suddenly wakes up and emerges from underground to begin war against innocent civilians.
• A Relic of War: The local townspeople think the broken down old Bolo in the village square is merely a monument to the past. But then it reactivates.
• Combat Unit: Hostile aliens have found an old Bolo and are fooling around with it when it suddenly comes to life.

These stories are OK. Not really a subject I am interested in, though. Descriptions of fights, battles and machinery are boring to me. I did skip a lot of the text because I just don't care about such. For some reason, I thought Bolo was the name of a person, a pirate or criminal or politician. Came as a surprise that it is a fancy, self-aware tank.