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The Day Before Forever and Thunderhead

Keith Laumer,

John Berkey (Illustrator)

3.63 · Rating details · 41 ratings · 6 reviews

The Day Before Forever:
The year was 2103. The place was Earth. And time-voyager Steve Dravek had already found out too much for his numbed brain to absorb. About the science of Cryonics, the freezing of human beings. About the visas caried by every man, woman and child - permits for living and for dying. About the reign of terror that enveloped Earth. Now, gun in hand, Ste ...more

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Paperback, 157 pages

Published 1968 by Dell

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Jul 29, 2018 Lars Dradrach rated it really liked it

Shelves: paper

3 stars for the story and an extra for a rediscovered story from my early teens that still holds up.

Two very different short stories from the late sixties from the very overlooked and nearly forgotten Keith Laumer.

The Day Before Forever is classic action sci-fa in style of early Heinlein, a man awakes without a memory a slowly puts the pieces together while discovering a world several hundred years after the one he was born in.

Thunderhead a bittersweet story about a forgotten corporal on an ou ...more

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Apr 25, 2018 Jim rated it liked it

A fast read of a typical pulpish 60s-type science fiction story (actually from 1968). By Keith Laumer (1925-1993), one of the more prolific SF authors of the 60s. I consider him an average SF author, with some good stories, but nothing outstanding (as far as I know!). This one is typical Laumer. Steve Dravek wakes up in the future-the year 2103. And it's a bummer-the world is controlled by a dictatorship. But Steve is a tough guy, if not a superman, and he's ready to take on the global tyranny. ...more

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Jun 17, 2018 Craig rated it liked it

The Day Before Tomorrow is a hard-boiled mystery with an interesting twist on the time-travel-through-cryogenics theme. It hasn't aged as well as one might wish, but it's good for Laumer fans. I preferred Thunderhead, the shorter of the two, a military story of duty and honor that would have been right at home in Campbell's Astounding alongside stories like Theodore Cogswell's The Specter General. ...more

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Mar 30, 2015 tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE rated it it was ok

Shelves: sf

review of
Keith Laumer's "The Day Before Forever" and "Thunderhead"
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 30, 2015

Ok, regular readers of my reviews may know by now that when I read a Keith Laumer bk it's b/c I'm extremely depressed & I want something simple & undemanding to read to tide me over while I try to recoup my energies. It's kindof like taking a laxative to get the Fallon out of you.

The weird thing about this one is that I'm sure I read the Thunderhead story before but I can't find it ...more

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Dec 17, 2018 Traummachine rated it liked it

Laumer’s always tough for me to review. I love the gritty, action-oriented pulp feel of his stories, they’re fast, fun, and engaging. But the toxic manliness that he felt compelled to infuse in the whole thing is grating. The only emotions are oh so masculine. The only female characters are there as love interests at best, “conquests” at worst. I get that it was the 60s, but...I really enjoy some aspects of his fiction, but I always have to brace for impact.

This was a collection of a couple nove ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 SciFiOne rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi

1980 grade B+
2014 grade B

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About Keith Laumer

Keith Laumer

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John 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 sa John 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.
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