Keith Laumer is best known for his Retief stories. And, as has happened to many writers in history, he has become so identified with a single character that his other work has tended to languish in obscurity as the years go on.
Speaking for myself, I think that's very unfortunate. For all their entertaining character, the fact is that the Retief stories are by no means the best things Laumer ever wrote. They're not even the funniest things he ever wrote. I admit, again, that it's a matter of taste—but at least for my money there's more humor contained in his grim little story "In the Queue" than there is in all the Retief stories put together.
In the next two volumes of this reissue series, we will be presenting a very different side of Keith Laumer. The second volume, Odyssey—which will appear in March of 2002—contains some of Laumer's best pure adventure stories. Two of his best novels will be in that volume—Galactic Odyssey and Dinosaur Beach—along with five other great stories: "A Trip to the City," "Once There Was a Giant," "The King of the City," "Hybrid" and "Combat Unit."
In the third volume, which I titled The Lighter Side, we will be reissuing the best of Laumer's "comic" stories. I put the term "comic" in quotation marks because Laumer's sense of humor often had a grim edge to it. The wit in the Retief stories is basically light-hearted—as it is in such stories as The Great Time Machine Hoax, a novel which will be included in the third volume. But in many of his stories, such as "In the Queue" (which, depending on my mood, I often think is the single best thing Laumer ever wrote), the humor is contained within a very sharp-edged shell.
So stick around. At his best, Keith Laumer could tell a story in a way which was unique to himself in the history of science fiction. The Retief stories were just one aspect of his talent, and by no means the greatest.
Eric Flint
May 2001
[1] Cf. the original colorful language: "maintenance of a state of tension short of actual conflict." See CDT File 178/b/491, col. VII, spool 12: 745mm (code 2g)
[2] Cf. The original colorful language: "maintenance of a state of tension short of actual conflict." See CDT File 178/b/491, col. VII, spool 12: 745mm (code 2g)