Retief to the Rescue

 

By Keith Laumer

Retief, a diplomat, is posted to the planet of Futheron, home of the Hithers and the Nethers, more unkindly known as the Creepies and the Crawlies. Futheron, or as the natives call it, Ynnezadoog. 

An explanation of life on Furtheron from the book:

"When Admiral Slizz reported that the newly explored world Ynnezadoog was potentially habitable, a full Survey Party was dispatched at once....The landing party was greeted by a heavy bombardment to which the admiral responded by hastily erecting the fortified camp which has now come to be called Furtheron City. The early discovery of valuable mineral deposits provided sufficient incentive to remain, in spite of the hostility of the place....the 'bombardment' is a natural phenomenon, due to an eccentric sort of vulcanism, and has been proceeding continuously for at least some millions of years. Investigations by Groacian geologists revealed that gas pressure within the porous crust constantly expelled particles from surface pores, these particles ranging in size from dust grains to multi-ton boulders. Once expelled and having fallen back to the surface, such an object tended to roll or slide downhill until it encountered an open pore large enough to admit it, in time wearing well-refined grooves which thereafter channeled later objects to the same orifice. These returning particles clogged the gas vents until re-expelled, the repeated expulsions occurring along the most convenient channels, in time smoothing and strengthening them until they attained the appearance of well-polished gun barrels. Having evolved under constant bombardment from an unknown source, they [the native peoples] not unnaturally developed a sense of hostility toward whomever it was who was attacking, as they imagined. Since the enemy could be anyone, mutual hostility became the norm. Thus spurring the growth of intelligence, while the natural conditions kept the population small and prevented  developments of any cooperative nature, such as organizing socially. We Groaci found conditions of complete anarchy here, and of course set about creating local government institutions in the hope of ameliorating the universal impulse to attack on sight any fellow Furtheronian—foreigners, of course, being exempt, since clearly they could not be at the bottom of an assault which predated their arrival by eons. In the end, we arrived at two major factions, which we not unnaturally called Hither and Nether, based on the location of the parley sites at which the protocols were hammered out. We appointed Lib Glip as Premier here aboveground, and one Barf, self-styled 'General' as the Nether Leader."

 And this is the world that Retief has arrived on and on which he will attempt to bring some kind of peace and order to a world that has never know peace and order. With no help from the resident Groaci, an expansionist race that has been competing with humankind ever since they discovered each other. 

This was an OK read. It has the usual silliness which is what I like about the Retief stories. Unfortunately, too large a section of the story is about the super tank that Laumer has written about in other stories, the Bolo, which is an idea he clearly absolutely LOVES. I don't, though. 

 

 

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. 

Retief: Emissary to the Stars

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of eight Retief stories dating from the 1960s and 1970s.

• THE HOOB MELON CRISIS:  As per usual, Terrans and Groaci are in disagreement about who owns a newly discovered world, Froom 93 aka New Groac. And, as per usual, Jame Retief steps in to send the Groaci packing, by introducing an invasive species, gribble-worms. The gribbles take over the world, but they shed their skins, which are quite lovely and can be made into gorgeous cloth. Still it backfires, when the Terrans decide they no longer want Froom 93 either, what with all the gribbles. So the Groaci can have it if they want. Unfortunately, the Groaci mistakenly release the gribbles on their home planet and the worms go after their major crop, Hoob melons.
• THE GARBAGE INVASION: Once again, Terran and Groaci can't agree what to do with the latest new world. Delicia is a natural paradise, green and lush, and Terrans want it to be declared a galactic park. The Groaci are pushing to have it turned into a planet-wide garbage dump and have already started dumping trash on it. To complicate things, a third group has arrived on Delicia, the Basurans. A bellicose race of beings known mainly for eating their planet away to bedrock, they want to add the planet of Delicia to their diet. 
• Excerpt from RETIEF AND THE WARLORDS: Retief and a companion, Harrumph, have been jailed and are shortly to be fed to vicious predators in an arena, to the delight of the locals of Harrumph's home world. But Retief gets his hand on a potent drug, that when taken, gives him an interesting super power.
• THE TROUBLESHOOTER: Basurans, led by one Intimidator of Insolent Upstarts Honk, are causing trouble again, this time on Furtheron, a bucolic planet settled by farmers. Stupidly, though, Honk agrees to a bet with Retief. 
• THE NEGOTIATORS: The diplomats find themselves stuck on a small barren island, the only solid ground on a water world, trying to negotiate a treaty with the natives. But they have no idea where the locals are or even what they look like. Until Retief happens to strike up a conversation with a large blob lounging on the beach. 
• GIANT KILLER: The diplomats mistakenly agree to kill a large carnivorous dinosaur that is dining on the local villagers. Failing to do so will be fatal.
• THE FOREST IN THE SKY: Zoon is has been taken over by voracious bunnies that will eat anything and the local people need help. But what the diplomatic missions didn't understand was that the bunnies are the people's children, mindless eating-machines that their parents are terrified of.
• TRICK OR TREATY: Retief and a small band of circus performers thwart an attempted takeover on the part of an unsavory group of centaurs.

Most of the stories in this collection are just average. In all the stories, most everybody is only looking our for number one, including the humans. And most have neither the brains or gumption to save themselves from disaster. Indeed, most seem indifferent to immanent doom. Only Retief seems to have any morals or seems to be the only one to care about his fellow intelligent beings. 

For me, the only stories that I truly enjoyed was  THE HOOB MELON CRISIS and the excerpt, RETIEF AND THE WARLORDS. 

Retief and the Rascals

 

By Keith Laumer

Welcome to planet Bloor. Where everyone is on the take and no one does an honest day's work and every fellow is out to cut the other fellow's throat. How is a self-respecting Terran diplomat supposed to cope and bring enlightenment and succor to the distressed natives? 

Maybe Magnan, accomplished, senior diplomat, is able to handle the shifting and unstable alliances that is normal everyday life on Bloor. But for Retief, his assistant, hands off isn't his style. He wades in, both fists flying, and restores order, brief though it may be, as chaos quickly resumes as soon as his back is turned. 

It is a hopeless mess, not only because of the unstable and quarrelsome locals, but even the diplomatic party from Terra is on the take and, of course, the greedy, treacherous Groaci are present too, looking to fill their pockets with whatever they can get their tentacles on. But Retief is no dummy and he knows how to deal with what is basically the lost cause of planet Bloor.

This has to be one of the most boring Retief stories I have ever read. New characters pop in and out of the story, about a hundred characters, most of whom make brief appearances and then are gone. There are four main jokes in the story, puns based on the locals' names; the facial expressions schtick, how everyone is on the take and how everyone, Terrans, locals, Groaci, and other assorted aliens are ready to start a brawl over the most trifling occurrences. The last half of the book is centered around the on-again, off-again battles at the spaceport, which was just mind-numbingly boring. I skipped so many pages, I couldn't be bothered to care about who was fighting who.  The title character, Retief, who is usually the hero, is quite unheroic in this story and spends more time beating on people than I can recall him ever doing in any of the other Retief stories I have read. 

At one point, I began to think Laumer was in the middle of some kind of mental breakdown when he wrote this. But when I got to the end, I started to think maybe it was all quite deliberate and that he was making a rather serious point. Even so, it didn't make it worth wading through all the fights and battle scenes.

Retief's War

 

By Keith Laumer

Retief, the super diplomat, is back again, saving a planet and its people from the ills of galactic civilization, from the greedy Groaci and the locals from themselves.

The Quopp are composed of many tribes, each tribe unique and quite different and with most tribes cheerfully dining on the members of other tribes. Quopp is a world rich in metals and the Quoppina evolved to be partially mechanical and partially organic. 

A newly discovered world, the Terrans were quick to set up an embassy on Quopp. The leader of the diplomatic mission, of which Retief is a member, is Ambassador Longspoon. Longspoon came up with the "bright" idea of turning Quopp's criminal class, the Voion tribe, into the police force. But one ambitious Voion, Ikk, gets himself appointed Prime Minister and decides he and his tribe will take over Quopp. In short order, the embassy is bombed and the members of the Terran delegation locked up. All except Retief, who slips away, determined, with the help of any of the locals he can convince to stand up to the Voion and with the help of some Terran settlers, to get to the bottom of Ikk's takeover.

Disguised as a Quoppina, Retief travels to the jungle countryside looking for allies and inspiring the local tribes into not fighting each other and instead fighting against Ikk's army of Voion. In the process, he discovers that the Groaci are involved and backing, advising and arming Ikk's troops, for their own greedy reasons.  

In addition to trying to fend off the start of a world war, Retief also has to rescue a group of women whose space ship was shot at in space and it crashed landed in the jungle. Among those women is one who, unknown to Retief, is someone he cares greatly about. But it's all just business as usual for Retief of the CDT!

This was an ok read. A lot of it is about the various conflicts and battles that Retief engineers and gets involved in. The most interesting thing is the variety of Quoppina, the intelligent beings of Quopp, who come in all sizes from tiny to gigantic and who have wheels instead of feet. Some of the Quoppina are like trucks, some are like bulldozers, some are like cargo planes and some have specialized nippers, cutters and manglers depending on their evolutionary niche in the world. 

What wasn't so interesting were the many fights and battles to wade through. I just skimmed the battle scenes. I don't care about the action, I don't need a play-by-play, I just care about the outcome. 

Retief and the Warlords

 

By Keith Laumer

Retief is a First Secretary in the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne. His boss is Magnan, Assisstant Deputy Undersecretary of Inter-species Affairs. The inter-species Magnan is currently concerned about are the Haterakans, a warlike species making inroads against a group of frontier Terran worlds. Magnan's solution to Haterakan aggressions is four fold:

• PAUPER or Panel for Alien Uplift Protection Enlightenment and Relief.
• CHUMP or Council for Humane Understanding of Minority Problems.
• SUCKER or Special Unit for Conferring Knowledge on Emergent Races.
• Retief - throwing the work all on Retief and sending him off to deal with the Haterakans.

Retief gets captured by a Haterakan, Fleetmaster Harrumph. Expecting a hero's welcome when Harrumph returns to Haterakan territory with his captive, instead Harrumph and Retief are arrested and tortured and placed into an arena for public execution.  The execution doesn't go quite the way the Haterakan leader, Grand Admiral Hikop, anticipated. Thanks to the chaos that Retief creates, he and Harrumph escape in a stolen spacecraft and make their way to Terran territory and throw in with the locals who are standing against the Haterakans invaders.

A few parts of this story are amusing like Magnan's three programs meant to contain the Haterakans with what are basically bribes and Retief and Harrumph being tortured as Retief finds the torture mildly annoying at worst. But other than that, the book is mostly about the struggle between the local Terrans and the invading Haterakans, with battles and plotting and even a fist fight. I think Laumer is at his best when he is being funny and funny is mostly lacking in this story. 

Retief: Diplomat At Arms

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of Retief stories, dating from 1961 to about 1966.

• Ultimatum aka Mightiest Quorn (1963) Settlers on a planet are suddenly and unexpectedly invaded by an alien race, the Quorn.
• Native Intelligence aka The Governor of Glave (1963) Malcontents on a wintery planet take over the government only to find out governing a planet is a lot more complicated than they imagined.
• The Prince and the Pirate (1964) A palace coup is attempting to oust the rightful ruler of Elora. The rebels have formed an alliance with the Terran ambassador but Retief is siding with the royals.
• Courier aka The Frozen Planet (1961) A criminal organization has brutal plans for a planet of farmers and ranchers. 
• Protest Note aka The Desert and the Stars (1962) The settlers of Flamme have worked hard to make their planet liveable. But now squatters have shown up and are ruining everything. 
• Truce or Consequences (1966) The inhabitants of twin planets are at war, declaring each other intruders on their home worlds. 
• The Secret While visiting with the Terran ambassador, D'ong, the Grotesque Minister of Foreign Affairs for Grote reveals he has a tea bag which can produce endless amounts of tea. The ambassador declares he must know the secret of D'ong's tea bag. But before inquires can be made, D'ong is kidnapped by the Groaci.

I first started reading Retief stories because they were silly and funny. Of this collection, only two of the stories are silly and funny, Truce or  Consequences and The Secret. The rest of the stories in this collection, Laumer's earlier Retief stories, are not funny.  If they had been the first Retief stories I had encountered, I wouldn't have read any more Retief stories. In the earlier stories, Retief is a kind of superman and Malcolm is just a corrupt diplomat. In the funny stories, Retief is still a kind of superman, but a lot faster with a quip. And Malcolm is just a gullible fool who never seems to understand what is really going on. I, for one, am glad Laumer went from writing serious Retief stories to goofy Retief stories with stories featuring giant squirrels, aliens that look like a pile of spaghetti to an alien that is a big as a hill and who entertains his visitors in his innards.

Retief of the CDT

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of five Retief stories:

• Ballots and Bandits
• Mechanical Advantage
• Pime Doesn't Cray
• Internal Affairs
• The Piecemakers

These are five of the best Retief stories, featuring engaging aliens and funny plots.

In Ballots and Bandits, Retief gets involved in local politics on the planet Oberon. The denizens of Oberon are a variety of sizes of squirrel-like creatures, ranging from as tiny as a mouse to larger than human beings. The largest Oberons are the Tsuggs and they have political ambitions which they are attempting to implement by force. Retief visits the Tsugg chieftain and manages to become their representative to the Terran embassy.

Mechanical Advantage finds Retief and Magnan on Verdigris, a planet of ancient abandoned cities. Apparently the people that built the cities have vanished long ago. Not surprisingly, the Groaci are there too and despite the Terran prior claim are busy looting the ruins of their valuable antiquities. Retief and Magnan stumble across an underground garage full of large, dangerous, intelligent machines. The machines awaken and challenge the two Terrans but in the process Retief wins their support and turns them loose on the Groaci.

Pime Doesn't Cray features one of Laumer's weirdest aliens. Described as looking like a pile of spaghetti, they all speak in Spoonerisms: pime doesn't cray instead of crime doesn't pay. It makes for a bit of tricky reading but I found if you don't try to translate it to normal, the meaning still comes through just fine.

Anyway, the Terrans are building a magnificent theater as a gift to the locals of Squale. But the day before the theater is to be unveiled, it vanishes.  Of course, the Groaci are behind the theft but with the help of his spaghetti-like chauffeur Chauncey, Retief will make all straight.

On the planet of Quahog, the Terran delegation in Internal Affairs wants to make contact with the local ruler, His Supremacy. But the terrible weather and violent winds and aggressive wildlife has the Terran diplomats holed up in a cave and subsisting on snacks and champagne. 

But when Retief and Magnan arrive, they discover the "aggressive" wildlife are the emissaries of His Supremacy and they must communicate by telepathic touch. While the other diplomats cower in the cave, Retief and Magnan head off to the His Supremacy's castle which turns out to be just a low mound of hills as the climate is too extreme for any buildings to last for any amount of time. But shortly after they arrive, His Supremacy becomes violently ill. Fortunately, even medical care is not beyond the capabilities of the ever-ready Retief.

The Piecemakers starts off with the Groaci in a standoff against the Slox, both of them claiming the planet Yudore as their own. Retief and Magnan are there to broker a peace between the two groups but end up crash landing on Yudore. There they find out the locals are all of one mind and what that mind wants is company. Anyone who lands on Yudore finds their spacecraft immediately disabled in order to keep them from ever leaving.

I first read these stories decades ago. I enjoyed them as much this time as the first time I read the stories. My favorites are Ballots and Bandits, Pime Doesn't Cray and Internal Affair. The other two stories were not quite as appealing but still enjoyable. 

Retief in the Ruins

 

By Keith Laumer

Three stories about Retief, an assistant to Ben Magnan, who is a member of the diplomatic corps. Ben and Retief are sent to various embassies throughout the galaxy. They report to the ambassador, and of all the diplomatic staff people, only Retief seems to be competent at his job. Virtually on his own, Retief manages to save the day, protecting Terran interests and thwarting the Groaci, the trouble makers of the galaxy, who are always up to something nefarious.

All three stories are nearly the same. Location is changed, the Groaci evil plot is changed, the denizens of the individual worlds are changed and how Retief takes care of everything is changed. But other than that, everything else is the same. Retief discovers a Groaci or two behaving suspiciously. Retief investigates and engages with the locals and figures out what the Groaci are up to and then he does exactly what it takes to stop them. Ben Magnan usually get dragged into too, always against his will.

The stories are OK. Not as funny or inventive as many of his other Retief stories. It seemed to me like he wasn't really trying, just sticking to the formula. 

The stories:

• Retief in the Ruins
• There Is a Tide
• The Woomy

The Great Time Machine Hoax

 

By Keith Laumer

Chester W. Chester IV has inherited an estate which also contains a powerful experimental computer. Problem is that the the estate is burdened with a massive amount of tax debt and is due to be liquidated. So before that happens, Chester and his friend Case are taking a look around the place. They are especially interested in the computer.

It is a very powerful computer and has been quietly growing more powerful, as Chester and Case soon discover. It has spread itself wide and far, on the sly, expanding its hardware and manipulating society for its own benefit. Case gets the idea that they could use the computer to create realistic 3D vignettes that the public would be willing to pay good money to see. But these two goofs don't understand the power of this computer, because instead of creating the vignettes, it actually creates reality. Which becomes almost fatally clear when it conjures a scene of primitive humans who then rush out of the viewing area and capture the two men and Genie who is the human computer interface that the computer created from a drop of Case's blood.

Chester and Genie are locked away in cages and Case is forced to fight one of the primitives, a huge giant of a man.  While Case is taking on the giant, Chester and Genie manage to get free and run back to the arrival base and yell for the computer to bring them home, fully intending to return to get Case. But when they return it is not the same place as it was when they left. It's similar but slightly different. Genie gets captured by the police and locked up and Chester returns to base but still can't get back to the where he started. Now he is in a new location and the locals have lots of plans for him and they won't let him have access to the arrival base unless he agrees to do as they wish. Meanwhile Genie is stuck in jail and who knows what is happening to Case, battling the giant, primitive man.

This is fun and exciting story and very entertaining. Laumer is at his best when he is telling a humorous and action-packed tale. I suppose he is best known for his Retief stories. This story is similar to the Retief stories, just without Retief. There's dumb cops, mean thugs and self-involved bureaucratic types just like in the Retief stories.

I've read this story three or four times over the years and enjoyed every time.

Zone Yellow

By Keith Laumer

Brion Bayard is an agent of the Imperium. When his world is invaded by an army of intelligent, evolved rats, Bayard is the man on the spot. He travels to the alternate universe the rats originated from and attempts to understand what has caused them to launch an assault on the Imperium. What he finds is a convoluted tangle of disease, politics, and double-dealing. But nothing that Bayard can't handle.

This story was so confused and disjointed. At first you are supposed to hate the rat people, who are portrayed very negatively (they eat their wounded comrades while the wounded are still alive). Then they are portrayed as the downtrodden dupes of a mysterious leader who has overthrown the rightful ruler, a young and appealing royal girl rat. The evil villain war lord rat who invaded the human world suddenly becomes the hero rat who helps defeat the usurper. It was all rather convoluted and not in a good way. It just didn't make a lot of sense, and unlike many of Laumer's novels, was not the least bit amusing. Just a huge waste of time.

The Star Treasure

By Keith Laumer

Ban Tarleton was a young Lieutenant on a Navy starship. He accidentally became entangled in a conspiracy to thrown down the ruling forces which resulted in his deserting his post when he thought the starship was being taken over by the conspirators. He fled to Earth where he hid out in extreme hardship, nearly starving to death in the process. He eventually fell into the hands of the authorities and was court-martialed and sent to work the mines on a hot, desert planet.
Life is brutal there and once again, Ban runs afoul of the conspirators, who are convinced that Ban has information vital to their cause, despite his protests to the contrary. He also refuses to join them, maintaining his loyalty to the status quo. His stubbornness results in his being framed for a crime he didn't commit and being cast out of the mines and into the implacable desert of this dry, hot, barren planet. But he doesn't die. Instead he stumbles onto a secret that will not only save his life but will gain him his freedom.

This was a pretty good read. Poor Ban get the stuffing knocked out of him but he keeps on going, even when it looks hopeless. This is a real adventure story, first with Ban trying to escape detection while as a fugitive on Earth and then as he struggles to survive on the prison planet. And the last part of the story is really satisfying, as Ban stumbles on to the secret that will completely turn his life around.