A Son of the Rock

Sphere, 1970, 187 p.

As its title announces, this is a collection of nine Science Fiction stories written by Keith Laumer, one of the jobbing SF writers of the 1950s and 1960s. The stories are very much of their time (in fact of before the book’s time of publication since many of their backgrounds are redolent of the 1930s.)

Hybrid is an account of the last days of an organism with a strange life cycle on a planet where a group of more-or-less uncouth humans are exploring. The story’s title somewhat gives the plot away.

End as a Hero is the story of Granthan, an Earthman sent out to try to defeat the Gool, who are at war with humans. He survives fire and broken limbs but on return to Earth finds himself able to access others’ minds and influence them so is mistrusted since the Gool may have taken over his mind and so he has to struggle against both species. This is well-plotted but these days reads as very dated indeed.

As a story The Walls foresaw the coming of flat screen television, but here as a distraction from an outside world that has no wild spaces save for those used by the TV production companies and the President’s garden. Flora, the woman subject of the tale, whose husband seems obsessed with lining all four walls with screens, is driven up them by her isolation.

In Dinochrome, the narrator, a war machine, reactivates after three centuries in the enemy’s heartlands.

Placement Test panders to that US myth of exceptionalism and the utility of breaking rules in a story where the protagonist engages in all sorts of mayhem only to be rewarded for it.

Doorstep has a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later one star General in charge of responding to an alien craft landing in his area. Things do not go well.

The Long-remembered Thunder is one of those stories set in the US backwoods where a stranger has taken up a house on the edge of town and appears not to age. It develops into a tale of attempted alien invasion.

Cocoon is another tale of humanity circumscribed by what is in effect virtual reality though in Laumer’s day it had not been described as such. Here people are living in cocoons, drip-fed pap and kept amused and interested by Vital Programming, Sitcom and Pubinf. But Sid and his wife Cluster have been in their closed environments for a long, long time and things are starting to go wrong.

A Trip to the City is a curious mix of the sudden travel through a portal tale and Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. A man called Bret leaves his home town of Casperton for adventure and ends up in a strange city where amorphous aliens known as Gels have replaced nearly all the inhabitants with golems. His situation is, of course, resolved by violence.

Laumer is a writer whose work I found interesting back in the day but I would not recommend this collection to anyone now setting out to read SF. It is too rooted in the past and USian gung-ho-ism.

Pedant’s corner:- unfocussed (unfocused,) rear-ranging (presumably due to the transition from typescript to printing block: rearranging,) “here eyes” (her eyes,) “the Harry Trimble’s” (Trimbles,) inpression (impression.) “The trouble is father back” (farther back,) imulse (impulse,) gasses (gases,) “then the time comes” (when the time comes.) “There was cries” (there were cries,) lintal (lintel.) “‘Which was did Bram go?’” (Which way,) “his hand, in his pocket” (does not need that comma.) “Brams’ eyes opened” (Bram’s eyes,) “I only know what it required to operate the device” (what is required,) gasses (gases,) “Bram cut in heavily accented English” (Bram cut in in heavily accented English,) “he held out is hand” (his hand,) “autho-hypno” (auto-hypno: used later,) Sir (x 3, always ‘Sid’ elsewhere,) “‘this is free country’” (is a free country.) “Heaven’s” (as an exclamation it’s ‘Heavens’,) “‘they haven’t built the computer yet than can’” (yet that can.) “He’d seen about that” (it’s yet to happen; ‘He’d see about that’,) a missing start quote mark when a piece of dialogue carries on into the next paragraph, “Mr Phillips’ hand” (Mr Phillips’s,) “a green waitress’ uniform” (waitress’s.)