Bolo!

Bolo! is a must read for fans of military fiction, military sf or anyone that enjoys action with depth and a point. Weber deftly draws the reader in, building sympathy for the Bolos and their commanders. He builds the multiple themes of the horror of war, the human ability to transcend mental and physical limitations in extreme need, the bonds between veterans, and the dangers of duty and honour as motivations without reason. There is a final over-arching theme exposed by the end of the last story: the ultimate consequences of total war.
This book should be thought about, not just read. Masterful storytelling!

Bolo! isn’t necessarily a bad book. It’s just that it’s not that great either, at least not by David Weber’s standards. Apparently, one Keith Laumer created the Bolo decades ago. It’s an uber-tank, one with so many uber-weapons on it, everyone in the universe knows of it and is terrified of it. Just one alone can defend an entire planet. One can level an entire city while shooting down warships attacking the planet. It’s farfetched, but intriguing as a premise. And apparently, many authors have written stories and books with Bolos as their theme. This Weber book is a compilation of some short stories he wrote, mostly during the 1990s, collected here in one volume. It could be decent, but it’s not exactly what I expect from show more Weber, so I didn’t finish it.

The first story is about an old Bolo, about 80 years old, left unattended on this backwater planet, sent a new Naval commander. But the late former commander had made some “adjustments” to this Bolo and it has become essentially sentient. Its name is Nike and it thinks about its old and new commanders and analyzes everything at all times, searching for threats. The new commander, Merritt, realizes pretty quickly what he has on his hands and he doesn’t inform his chain of command because he doesn’t want his new toy taken from him. But he begins to develop an unusual and somewhat unrealistic affection for Nike, and this is what began to turn me off to the story. He starts treating Nike like a woman, like a girlfriend/mistress/lover and refers to her (it has a female voice, as it was programmed to have one by its late female commander) as “darling” and “love.” It’s a little too icky for me to like or buy.

An evil corporation wants to run the population off this planet because it’s just become a newly important junction in a trade route, so it hires a mercenary team, does some research and surveillance, discovers the Bolo and buys the mercenaries new tactical equipment, including two “generic” Bolos of their own. Then they invade. You can guess the rest of the story. The human and machine lovers ride off to their deaths into the sunset, defending the planet with their blood and … motor oil? It’s very touching. Yep. A bit overly dramatic, I’d call it. Way too dramatic. So damn dramatic, I decided not to read any more stories, as I figured I’d read just about enough on the Bolos that I could, why endure more?

Weber can write a great series. He has several and I have all of the books. He also usually writes great battle scenes. But his standalone books usually lack something. Such is the case with this one. It doesn’t have the usual Weber touch. It’s just too corny. Two stars or three? Three stars because the Bolos really are cool weapons. However, not recommended. show less

This was definitely a re-read, but I can't recall when I first read it. Wonderful stories! Weber does every bit as good a job as Laumer did, which is amazing. It's been years since I read Laumer's original Bolo stories, but I think you could read them back to back without a problem.

The tone, points & style are all perfect. The theme of the horror of war blended with the courage & convictions of the warriors came off very well. The last story strikes it all home wonderfully. The idea that these machines, artificial intelligences of various abilities, mirror humanity at its best & worst. Sometimes they transcend it. A fantastic read.

A military SF book with Weber at his best. A novelette and several short stories in "True Bolo" tradition with a wistful but appropriate ending. For the real Bolo buffs, there is an appendix that shows its evolution from a smart battle tank to a truly autonomous, with very humanistic characteristics, battle wagon on tracks.

This book is a return to the short story collection style of Bolo book, with all of these short stories being written by David Webber. Unfortunately, most of these stories are not new: "Miles to Go" and "A brief technical history of the Bolo" appeared in Bolos 3: The Triumphant, and "The Traitor" and "A Time To Kill" appeared in Bolos 4: Last Stand. Only "With Your Shield" is new to me in this book.

That one new story is a good one, although I think it helped that the Melconians had already been introduced in other short stories. I enjoyed it, even though there was only about 90 pages of new content in this book.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Keith_Laumer/Bolo.html

Not my sort of book really, but it was chosen for the SciFi Bookclub I attend. I must admit to not actually reading all of it, so this is only really a review of the first of the stories collected here.

It started with some of the dry, cynical humour I like which made me feel less like a duck out of water, but then it turned into what I feared - "My gun's bigger than your's!" with a rather dull romance thrown in.

It took me a couple of weeks to get through it mainly because I couldn't bring myself to actually pick it up and read it. Not going to race out for more in this universe.

Easily my second favorite Bolo book, with Old Soliders being the favorite.