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The Long Twilight and Other Stories

3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 · rating details · 56 ratings · 4 reviews

A huge volume of edge-of-the-seat science fiction adventure, including: * "The Long Twilight": Grayle and Falconer met in relentless combat with no quarter in prehistoric ages past, their endless battle now remembered only as dark myths and legends. Now their long battle is nearing its climax--and the final battleground is an uncontrolled experimental power plant that thre...more

Mass Market Paperback, 496 pages

Published August 26th 2008 by Baen Books,U.S. (first published 1969)

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Apr 19, 2013 David Miller rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Seldom have my opinions of a book swung so widely as I read it.

This collection includes four short stories and two longer stories. The longer ones, The Long Twilight and Night of Delusions, I found to be interesting. Silly, and a little cliched in their execution, but interesting and fun in their own way. It's not often that one reads about immortal aliens, who are actually Thor and Loki of Norse myth, but actually just aliens, battling across Earth's history under the machinations of a sinister...more Seldom have my opinions of a book swung so widely as I read it.

This collection includes four short stories and two longer stories. The longer ones, The Long Twilight and Night of Delusions, I found to be interesting. Silly, and a little cliched in their execution, but interesting and fun in their own way. It's not often that one reads about immortal aliens, who are actually Thor and Loki of Norse myth, but actually just aliens, battling across Earth's history under the machinations of a sinister giant cat, and I appreciated the spectacle.

But it was the short stories that soured me on Laumer. Birthday Party and The Half Man were interesting, the latter especially so, but The Lawgiver and The Plague were odious, hackneyed, reactionary, unpleasant political allegories. The first begins with the rant of an ignorant Bible-thumper accusing a politician of being a baby killer for advocating abortion as a means of population control, and spends its entirety proving the politician to be exactly that.

The Plague is worse: a contrived screed against the evils of "socialism," wherein a farmer fights off an invading charitable organization that wants to occupy his land and give all his food to the poor. The farmer defiantly claims "I know these good people...I tried to hire some of them when I was breaking ground here. They laughed. They're the untrainables, the unemployables. They've had a free ride all their lives..." and so on and so forth. Just how the protagonist knows that the people he's talking about are the same ones his antagonists are talking about is beyond me. The fact that they're poor seems proof enough; they're all alike, aren't they?

After forcing myself through what was essentially Animal Farm for the John Birch Society, it was harder for me to ignore Laumer's other regrettable tendencies, like his consistently patronizing attitude toward women. Even when I reached some imaginative passage that genuinely impressed me, I couldn't get over how badly soured I was by those stories. And on top of all that, Laumer's best (at least in this collection) would never have been enough to put him above three stars from me.(less)

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Sep 10, 2008 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: action, science-fiction

Another favorite of mine. Two good guys who are trying to kill each other & I want to root for both of them. Great read, quick & fun.

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Mar 19, 2013 Olethros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

-Hablando se resolverían muchas disputas, pero el ser humano no siempre lo consigue y además se escribirían menos novelas.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. Mientras comienzan las pruebas de un nuevo sistema de energía, un recluso un tanto extraño comienza a cambiar su comportamiento, una gran tormenta comienza a formarse en el océano y un loco borrachín trata de volver a la realidad.

¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

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Apr 19, 2011 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

Fun read! I love Laumer, so it was an easy choice for me. Perfect for my mood. Light-weight, mostly straight-forward Sci/Fi adventure with a neat mythological twist.

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May 12, 2013 Chrystal Crouch marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apr 27, 2013 Michael added it · review of another edition

Apr 02, 2013 Rick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mar 31, 2013 Mikael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: viking-novels, science-fiction

Mar 28, 2013 Ray rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mar 27, 2013 Robert Garrard added it · review of another edition

Mar 24, 2013 Lee added it · review of another edition

Mar 22, 2013 Jon added it · review of another edition

Mar 17, 2013 Roy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mar 13, 2013 C G rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mar 08, 2013 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 28, 2013 Igraine marked it as auf-gar-keinen-fall

Feb 27, 2013 J.C. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Mar 14, 2013 Gsv3miac rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sold

Feb 21, 2013 Rienk rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 20, 2013 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 16, 2013 Paul Reid added it · review of another edition

Shelves: default

Feb 14, 2013 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Feb 11, 2013 Ludo added it · review of another edition

Feb 06, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Feb 05, 2013 Al Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 02, 2013 Terry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jan 13, 2013 Martín Lígori marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Dec 31, 2012 Ed Mech_Man added it · review of another edition

Shelves: _miscor2do

Dec 29, 2012 Bill marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: paper

Dec 03, 2012 Suzanne Moore marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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About Keith Laumer

John Keith Laumer (9 June 1925–23 January 1993) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. diplomat. His brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Keith's The Other Side of Time).

Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo stories and his satiri...more John Keith Laumer (9 June 1925–23 January 1993) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. diplomat. His brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Keith's The Other Side of Time).

Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo stories and his satirical Retief series. The former chronicles the evolution of juggernaut-sized tanks that eventually become self-aware through the constant improvement resulting from centuries of intermittent warfare against various alien races. The latter deals with the adventures of a cynical spacefaring diplomat who constantly has to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder. The Retief stories were greatly influenced by Laumer's earlier career in the United States Foreign Service. In an interview with Paul Walker of Luna Monthly, Laumer states "I had no shortage of iniquitous memories of the Foreign Service."

Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one of them, "In the Queue", received nominations for both) and his novel A Plague of Demons was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.

During the peak years of 1959–1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer, with his novels tending to follow one of two patterns: fast-paced, straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on lone-wolf, latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence or, broad comedies, sometimes of the over-the-top variety.

In 1971, Laumer suffered a stroke while working on the novel The Ultimax Man. As a result, he was unable to write for a few years. As he explained in an interview with Charles Platt published in The Dream Makers (1987), he refused to accept the doctors' diagnosis. He came up with an alternative explanation and developed an alternative (and very painful) treatment program. Although he was unable to write in the early 1970s, he had a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke published during that time.

In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing. However, the quality of his work suffered and his career declined (Piers Anthony, How Precious Was That While, 2002). In later years Laumer also reused scenarios and characters from his earlier works to create "new" books, which some critics felt was to their detriment:

Alas, Retief to the Rescue doesn't seem so much like a new Retief novel, but a kind of Cuisnart mélange of past books.

-- Somtow Sucharitkul (Washington Post, Mar 27, 1983. p. BW11)

His Bolo creations were popular enough that other authors have written standalone science-fiction novels about them.

Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the U.S. magazines Air Trails, Model Airplane News and Flying Models, as well as the British Aero Modeler. He published one book on the subject, How to Design and Build Flying Models in 1960. His later designs were mostly gas-powered free flight planes, and had a whimsical charm with names to match, like the "Twin Lizzie" and the "Lulla-Bi". His designs are still being revisited, reinvented and built today.
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