Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side

This book contains adventure tales that are a fast read, light yet satirically wild. There are two novels about hapless heros caught in a world with changing time streams out of their control. We follow the heros as they travel through these differrent times and deal with the obstacles they encounter, as they try to get back to where they started from.

This collection of Mr. Laumer's works even contains three short stories which are worth reading on their own merit. One has Satan asking a professor to aid him save Hell. Another is a movie production studio using Earth as a set, and they plan to blow the set up at the end of the movie. and the final short story is about a time where you can purchase any body you can afford.

If you do not show more have this book, buy it. If you have it, read it. You will be glad you did. show less

I found this collection of short stories/novellas to be a mixed bag. Some were clever, some were interesting, but some were pretty corny/forced in their attempts at humor. I ended up skipping over a couple of the stories, while quite enjoying some of the others.

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com by express permission of this reviewer Title: The Lighter Side Series: N/A Author: Keith Laumer Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 433 Synopsis: A series of novellas and short stories that are slightly humorous and still as pessimistic in outlook as Laumer can be. Amusing is probably a better word than humorous. My Thoughts: I really, really like Galactic Odyssey and The Compleat Bolo by Laumer and I keep trying to his other stuff. And I keep disliking show more it. He's pessimistic, but not just in a funny way, but in a hopeless way that leaves me feeling very depressed. I think I won't be trying any more by him. I'll stick to the 2 books I know I like and re-read them every several years. Thankfully this was free from the Baen Library so at least it wasn't money I wasted, just my time. " show less

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/10.1125/Baen/0743435370/0743435370.htm

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This is a collection of ten stories of varying lengths (including two novellas), originally published between 1964 and 1970.

Keith Laumer (1925–1993) normally wrote sf of a more serious kind, but I suppose the environment of the 1960s sometimes inspired him to let off steam in a wackier mode, and here are the results.

At first reading, I found the stories imaginative and mildly entertaining; I’m not sure how rereadable they’ll be.

Some reviewers have commented that the stories are dated and sexist. If you sit down to read sf written in the 1960s by a writer born in 1925, what else would you expect? It would be more remarkable and worthy of comment if Laumer had managed to write timeless and unsexist stories.