Worlds of the Imperium

review of
Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 21, 2013

Having just recently read my 1st bk by Keith Laumer, Time Trap, & having enjoyed it in an escaping-from-my-miserable-life-w/-an-entertaining-distraction kind of way, I picked up another 18 bks by him from a local bkstore where they were mostly selling for less than $2 apiece. SO, here goes, a Laumer spree.

Worlds of the Imperium was entertaining enuf, it did the trick, I read it in less than a day, I was engrossed, it was fun. The basic plot being that there're parallel universes & that in many of them a way to navigate these universes was discovered but that in most cases this discovery led to the destruction of life on the planet where the show more discovery was made or even the destruction of the entire planet. 3 of these parallel worlds survived & inhabitants of one of them kidnapped an inhabitant of another to save them from the dictator of the 3rd - or so most of them thought.

Slippage between worlds explained mundane mysteries: "Perhaps you yourself have noticed some tiny discrepancy at one time or another; some article apparently moved or lost; some sudden change in the character of someone you know; false recollections of past events. The universe isn't all as rigid as one might like to believe." - p 23

I suppose part of the joy of writing parallel universe novels is rewriting our own history alternatively:

""Back where I came from, everyone knows your name," I said. "Reichmarshall Goering . . ."

""Reichmarshall!" Goering repeated. "What an intriguing title!" he looked around at the others. "Is this not a most interesting and magnificent information?" he beamed. "I, poor fat Hermann, a Reichmarshall, and known to all." He was delighted." - p 34

Part of the reason, & what might seem to be a 'bad' one, for my enjoying reading these entertaining SF novels so much is that I don't feel compelled to take detailed notes on them b/c I'm not that interested in discussing their plots - wch is mainly what they're all about. When I'm reading an Alan Davies or a Louis Zukofsky poetry bk or an Iannis Xenakis music theory bk I feel like it's my intellectual 'duty' to have something intelligent to say about them. When I read Keith Laumer, I feel content w/ just having a good time. Ha ha!

There is a touch of formal thinking in the writing when Laumer substitutes "right and bright" (p 80) for "loud and clear" in a parallel universe. Laumer's far from being a writer who's not thinking about his craft. That's a large part about what keeps me interested. show less

Veamos, la historia va de mundos paralelos, siendo secuestrado de uno de ellos Bayard para que sustituya a su igual, un dictador, en su mundo. La historia es muy trepidante, todo el rato están pasando cosas. Pero eso, sí hay que saber que lo que se está leyendo, una novela de sabor a ciencia ficción clásica, un tanto pulp. Entretenida.

Like Biron Bayard, the hero of Worlds of the Imperium, author Keith Laumer was an ex-soldier and diplomat. He lived quietly, writing stories and designing model airplanes on an island in a Florida lake. Biron was not so lucky. While walking in Stockholm, he is kidnapped by agents from an alternate universe who want him to impersonate a local dictator. Biron is just the kind of suave swashbuckler we would d expect from the man who created Retief of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne.
Laumer wrote two sequels in the 1960s and one more in 1990. They are on my list of books to read.

One of my favorite SF authors from my teens. Laumer wrote many fun adolescent adventures and some serious works.
This is one of the better of the adolescent adventures. Great action and danger for our unintended hero. There are other Earths if you know how to get there.

This is a rather corny old story published in 1962, by a rather corny old author born in 1925. I had vague memories of having read it before, so I wasn’t expecting much of it, and it turned out a bit better than I expected: I quite enjoyed it.

The parallel worlds are mildly entertaining, and the details of Stockholm are cute: I lived in Stockholm for 4 years and remember some of the places mentioned in the story. Other parts of the story are set in Algiers; I don’t think I’ve ever been there.

Modern science-fiction writers can usually write well (and they use computers, not typewriters, which makes it easier), but too often they don’t write the kind of story I want to read. Old science-fiction writers were more likely to write my show more kind of story, but I often wish they could have written it better.

Modern stories tend to be longer than old ones. This story is described as a novel, but it’s the size of a modern novella. show less

Usted va andando por la calle, recibe un golpe en la cabeza, es introducido en una furgoneta celular y despierta… en una realidad diferente, en un mundo semejante al que conoce, pero cuyos datos han sido sutilmente modificados.
Seguidamente sus raptores le ordenan que asesine a un tirano repugnante y encabece una revoluvión. Con un pequeño detalle: el odiado dictador es el sosias, el doble perfecto de usted mismo, y no sale jamás de su palacio por temor al "cariño" de sus subditos.