stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Bolo Rising

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:01:00 PST

ISBN: 0671577794
Baen (1998), Mass Market Paperback, 400 pages
LibraryThing

In the distant future after the Melconians have done their thing, there is a small pocket of humans and they're having a bad day. One of things I like about the Bolo books is that their consistent in their overall direction for future human history, and that future is reasonably plausible -- its a bit like Asimov's extended Foundation Series, but written by a bunch of different authors. There must have been a huge coordination effort while producing these books.

This book is pretty standard Bolo fair, which is well written and entertaining. It wont make you a better person, but its a fun read and makes you think.

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Bolo Brigade

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 03:02:00 PST

ISBN: 067187781x
LibraryThing

There seems to be a formula for bolo books -- an obsolete bolo or two, and alien invader, a solitary bolo commander, and preferably a management chain which either doesn't trust bolos, the officer, or preferably both. Its even better if the chain of command is also grossly incompetent. This book has all of those, and I am left feeling that it didn't really add much to the overall bolo universe. Other books have explored some new aspect of the bolo psyche, or expanded on the history of the concordiat universe in some way, whereas this book didn't feel like it did any of that.

However, this was an entertaining book, and is reasonably well written. It just wasn't as ambitious as I'd hoped it would be.

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The Stars Must Wait

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:19:00 PST

ISBN: 0671698591
Baen (1990), Paperback, 283 pages
LibraryThing

This book is a novelization of "Night of the Trolls", which I have already read as part of The Compleat Bolo and Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow. I'm pretty fond of the short story, and this book version didn't start out strongly -- there is a prelude to explain some background, and then the book launches into what feels like the exact text of the short story. You can tell it hasn't been edited much, because there are minor continuity errors between this first chapter and the prelude. There are other continuity errors as well -- the blurb on the back says that the main character goes into stasis in 2002, but his wife dies in 1992 which is meant to be after the main character goes into stasis, and the map that he uses once out of stasis is copyright 2011 (even though the main character claims to have bought it just before going into stasis). Note that these dates are different to those used in the short story. These errors are distracting although the underlying story is still a good one.

However, the good bits of the story are all contained in the short story. This feels like a poorly edited and heavily padded version of that short story, and I think we would have been better off without it. There is in fact a whole heap of seemingly pointless dialogue in the center of the book, where I think what we're meant to be learning is that post-apocalyptic life isn't much fun. I think we could have worked that out, and perhaps saved 50 or so pages. Worst of all, Laumer has changed the ending to a much less satisfying one.

I recommend just sticking with the short story.

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Bolos 6: Cold Steel

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:38:00 PST

ISBN: 0743435494
LibraryThing

This bolo book is different from the previous ones, in that it heavily focuses on the humans side of the story, instead of the bolo's inner monologue. I've seen reviews online that say this makes it a bad bolo book, but I think that's unfair. The bolos are critical to the telling of this story, and you do hear from them. More than that, ultimately a point about the relationship between bolos and humans is being made that would be a lot harder to make if the story was told from the bolo side of the fence.

This was a good book and I enjoyed it.

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Bolos 5: Old Guard

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:02:00 PST

ISBN: 0671319574
Baen (2001), Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
LibraryThing

This book is similar to the previous Bolo anthologies in that it is written by a number of different authors, but utilizes Laumer's Concordiat universe. Contrary to another LibraryThing review, all of the stories on this book don't occur on one planet. All but one of them occurs on Delas, and the final one is on another nearby Concordiat planet. However, all of these stories do revolve around engagements with one enemy, and follow on from each other. This is something which hasn't occurred in other Bolo anthologies. I enjoyed this book, although it took longer to read than I would like because of other things happen in my life.

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Bolos 4: Last Stand

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:27:00 PST

ISBN: 0671877607
Baen (1997), Mass Market Paperback, 432 pages
LibraryThing

This book continues on from many of the previous short stories, which is a nice touch. It also starts to fill in some of the historical gaps between the collapse of US society (night of the trolls), to the Concordiat Empire, to the Melconian wars. I found one story in this book pretty hard to read, but that's mainly because its about a small child risking death from basically crazies. That story was good, just a bit close to the bone for me. I liked this book, which isn't a surprise because I have liked all the others as well.

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Bolos 3: The Triumphant

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:49:00 PST

ISBN: 067187683X
LibraryThing

This book is a little different from Bolos 1 and Bolos 2 in that it is several short novels instead of a collection of short stories. On the other hand, they're very good short novels, and I quite liked Nike's character. I'm glad I read this book.

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Bolos 2: The Unconquerable

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:06:00 PST

ISBN: 0671876295
Baen (1994), Mass Market Paperback, 288 pages
LibraryThing

This is another collection of short stories involving Laumer's Bolo artificially intelligent super tanks. None of these stories are written by Laumer, but they are written by some very good SF authors. I enjoyed the collection, although I do think Honor of the Regiment was marginally better.

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Bolos 1: Honor of the Regiment

Sat, 30 May 2009 22:18:00 PST

ISBN: 0671721844
Baen (1993), Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages
LibraryThing

I'm quite partial to the idea of artificially intelligent super tanks. I think they'd simplify my social life quite a lot, for example. I'm also partial to short story collections, and this book is both of those. The short stories are written by some excellent authors as well, which certainly helps. This book continues on from The Compleat Bolo, although Laumer didn't write any of the stories in this book. The stories follow two main patterns -- long retired tanks which the locals don't trust until they save the day; and stories about active combat. I guess that means you have to like war stories for these to work for you -- the stories are quite similar to David Drake's in that regard. Excellent, quick read.

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The Compleat Bolo

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:49:00 PST

ISBN: 0671698796
Baen (1990), Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages
LibraryThing

I read this book on flights. This book is a collection of several Bolo short stories, as well as two longer stories. This was a pretty common technique it seems with early science fiction, and it works ok here as long as you remember that the chapters are unlinked short stories. In fact, several of them are inconsistent with others in the collection, but I think that's a minor annoyance.

Year	Title	Notes
1963	Night of the Trolls	This story appears in Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow as well
1961	Courier	This is a Retief (Laumer's other major series) story which includes a Bolo. This is my first encounter with Reteif, and it felt a little like a Stainless Steel Rat story, but where the hero isn't a criminal, and without the requirement to suspend disbelief as much as you need to for the Rat.
1966	The Last Command
1969	A Relic of War
1960	Combat Unit
1986	Rogue Bolo Book 1
1986	Rogue Bolo Book 2	No relation to the Rogue Bolo Book 1, despite

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