Bolo

An early favorite that I've read several times over the years. Laumer does an excellent job keeping the action moving while looking at some interesting hangups between man & his self-aware machines.

I had never heard of Bolo before, but have read some Keith Laumer years ago.

A book of short stories from the 60s full of 2 dimensional characters, but very easy reading and a lot of fun.

Between 1960 and 1969 Keith Laumer wrote a series of six science fiction short stories about high-tech military tanks built by the Bolo Division of General Motors. In 1976 these stories were collected and published in book form. In order to give a sense of coherence and continuity to the collection which was subtitled “The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade” the stories were prefaced with a five page “technical history” short story titled “A Short History of the Bolo Fighting Machine” (the source of the above mentioned citation of the GM Bolo Division) which traces the evolution of the Bolo from a near future super tank (the stories were written in the 1960’s so the “history” begins in 1989) to development of the Bolo show more Model R in 2807 and to the Bolo Mark XX at some unspecified time beyond 2807. Laumer wrote a few subsequent novels with the Bolos as a focus but no additional short stories.

The six short stories are:

The Night of the Trolls – Bolos in the setting of a post-nuclear holocaust on Earth (ca. sometime after 2020)

Courier – A Retief of the CDT story with a Bolo playing an almost incidental role

Field Test – The first “no-drill” test of a Mark XX

The Last Command – The accidental activation of an inexpertly de-commissioned Bolo Mark XXVIII

A Relic of War – The re-activation of a “stuffed and mounted” Mark XXV park monument

Combat Unit – An upgrade of the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The stories are well crafted and they paint very good word pictures. I think they are a worthwhile addition to the area of military science fiction. See Common Knowledge for an example of the writing style. show less

Rather old fashioned and not very compelling.

This edition of the paperback seems to maybe be worth something, all current ebay listings are over $30, and AbeBooks is selling it for $149.99 in "good" condition. I would say ours is in "good" or "fair" condition, there's a lot of yellowing and the edges of the front cover have some slight wear, and the spine shows that it was read at least once, but that's basically it.

The Bolo is a fighting machine of the future: starting off as just a tank with a little added automation, it gradually evolves over the course of time into an intelligent, self-aware machine capable of operating under its own initiative.

This collection contains six stories mostly written in the 1960s, featuring different models of the Bolo in different time periods.

The more substantial stories here are ‘The Night of the Trolls’, ‘The Last Command’, and ‘Combat Unit’.

‘Courier’, ‘Field Test’, and ‘A Relic of War’ are readable enough but relatively feeble stories.