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Imperium #3
Assignment in Nowhere
THE COMING OF THE BLIGHT
It seemed as though the world was eroding right under everyone's feet. Stories disappeared from magazines; the baron's silver coat of arms, polished in the morning, was pitted with corrosion by afternoon; toadstools were springing up from every corner. And these were but the first signs of the coming plague, a cancerous orgy of patternless vitality seeking to engulf the world...
TO STEM THE TIDE
Carefree Johnny Curlon, indelicately plucked from his fishing boat one evening, is bluntly informed by high powers that he is a man destined for a role in great only his unique powers can prevent the coming probability crisis that threatens to turn the world into bubbling chaos....
It seemed as though the world was eroding right under everyone's feet. Stories disappeared from magazines; the baron's silver coat of arms, polished in the morning, was pitted with corrosion by afternoon; toadstools were springing up from every corner. And these were but the first signs of the coming plague, a cancerous orgy of patternless vitality seeking to engulf the world...
TO STEM THE TIDE
Carefree Johnny Curlon, indelicately plucked from his fishing boat one evening, is bluntly informed by high powers that he is a man destined for a role in great only his unique powers can prevent the coming probability crisis that threatens to turn the world into bubbling chaos....
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
2 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Keith Laumer
493 books221 followersJohn Keith Laumer 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 (aka J.K Laumer, J. 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 magazine 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.
Keith Laumer (aka J.K Laumer, J. 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 magazine 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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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 22, 2024
Ugh...once again, Laumer is all over the place, plot-wise - I won't even try to summarize. So really just 2 stars for the story itself.
But Laumer's whole concept of "the Blight" (which would have been a far better title that "the Imperium" for this series) is actually pretty cool, and ahead of it's time in taking on the multiverse. Basically, think of each universe as a straight line running through time parallel to all other universes. Well, in one of those universes, a pair of scientists came up with a way to travel perpendicular to those timelines, allowing them to travel between universes. Problem is, in their early experiments they basically screwed up royally, wiping out thousands of universes running "close to" our own, and so leaving us as basically an island surrounded by an unstable wasteland of destroyed universes - the Blight.
So 4 stars for the Blight itself, lifting this book to an average (if wholly-undeserved) 3. And with that I have now finished the original "Imperium" trilogy...but there's NO WAY I'm going anywhere near the 4th and final book in the series, written 22 years after Assignment (and nearly 20 years after Laumer's debilitating stroke), and dealing with, well, this:
But Laumer's whole concept of "the Blight" (which would have been a far better title that "the Imperium" for this series) is actually pretty cool, and ahead of it's time in taking on the multiverse. Basically, think of each universe as a straight line running through time parallel to all other universes. Well, in one of those universes, a pair of scientists came up with a way to travel perpendicular to those timelines, allowing them to travel between universes. Problem is, in their early experiments they basically screwed up royally, wiping out thousands of universes running "close to" our own, and so leaving us as basically an island surrounded by an unstable wasteland of destroyed universes - the Blight.
So 4 stars for the Blight itself, lifting this book to an average (if wholly-undeserved) 3. And with that I have now finished the original "Imperium" trilogy...but there's NO WAY I'm going anywhere near the 4th and final book in the series, written 22 years after Assignment (and nearly 20 years after Laumer's debilitating stroke), and dealing with, well, this:
May 16, 2020
Pretty disappointing, but it held my interest enough that I give it 3 stars. The first book of this series (Worlds of the Imperium) was really fun and the second (The Other Side of Time) was acceptable. Eric Flint says in the postscript to the epub omnibus of this series that Keith Laumer was never very concerned with continuity, and I agree. That foible is to the detriment of this book, however; the plot was very hard to follow and having knowledge of the previous works made the inconsistencies jarring. On the flip side, I think that without any prior knowledge of the series this book would have been almost incomprehensible.
Bottom line: A fair action story in a world that only barely makes sense.
Bottom line: A fair action story in a world that only barely makes sense.
January 29, 2013
3.5 stars:
Another fun book by Laumer where his stories of "time travel" are actually jumping from 1 alternate reality to another. This is the last book in the Imperium omnibus, although there's a 4th book in the series.
This time around, the lead from the first 2 novels takes a backseat. By doing this, Laumer was able to use the wide-eyed innocence again, while still trusting (to a degree) that the reader was already familiar. It was an obvious answer as I was reading it, but it worked well enough.
My only complaint with this book was that the plot was a bit poorly explained. Save this world from decaying into chaos, mold it to your own whims, figure out who's good and who's bad (is this an alternate timeline from what the reader knows, making the original lead bad??). Overall the plot was good...I just think Laumer's expositions to explain things suffered a bit in this volume. Still, a fun romp through alternate histories. :)
Another fun book by Laumer where his stories of "time travel" are actually jumping from 1 alternate reality to another. This is the last book in the Imperium omnibus, although there's a 4th book in the series.
This time around, the lead from the first 2 novels takes a backseat. By doing this, Laumer was able to use the wide-eyed innocence again, while still trusting (to a degree) that the reader was already familiar. It was an obvious answer as I was reading it, but it worked well enough.
My only complaint with this book was that the plot was a bit poorly explained. Save this world from decaying into chaos, mold it to your own whims, figure out who's good and who's bad (is this an alternate timeline from what the reader knows, making the original lead bad??). Overall the plot was good...I just think Laumer's expositions to explain things suffered a bit in this volume. Still, a fun romp through alternate histories. :)
October 11, 2018
I love it. It's a beautiful parable of love, destiny, freedom and sacrifice. That's all that matters.
May 25, 2022
Yep, this one was short but sweet. Laumer had a wonderful imagination and a good foundation in history and science. You can see this in his stories.
December 15, 2014
1982 grade B
aka Beyond The Imperium (part of it at least)
my series book WI2
aka Beyond The Imperium (part of it at least)
my series book WI2
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews