Saturday, 25 March 2017 12:45 am
Book Review: Bolos, Book 4: Last Stand
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deckardcanineI was mistaken earlier when I said that Keith Laumer wrote this. He had died by 1997. Instead, various writers ran with the premises he laid to create nine stories ranging from 25 to 89 pages each, followed by a set of technical notes. Naturally, they don't have the same sense of continuity that short-story compilations by one author have. In fact, I'm not sure they could all be true in the same universe.
Bolos, FYI, are the ultimate sci-fi army tanks. Enormous, heavily armed and armored, and granted advanced AI. Obviously not beholden to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics if human nations use them against each other (tho later stories concentrate on alien battles), but they are programmed with unflinching loyalty to their given side. As the title suggests, these stories focus on Bolos that are nowhere near peak condition; in many cases, neither are the civilizations they defend.
"The Sixth Sun," S.M. Stirling. One of the two longest stories, but I'm not convinced that it had to be. It's rather politically incorrect, the main villain being a South American native pagan leader with a mean streak a mile wide -- and, thanks to unwise smugglers, a gun similarly wide. The unlikely heroes are a concussed man, his preteen son, and the surviving female (ex-)smuggler, seeking to cross the jungle and send word to a village to get its long-disused Bolo back in gear. (Not only had they not needed it in ages, but it served as a tomb for a lauded lieutenant.) The fun comes largely in the good guys' attitudes bouncing off each other. Unfortunately, the Bolo doesn't show its stuff or even talk much until the story is nearly over. Bad choice for an introduction.
"The Traitor," David M. Weber. I knew from On Basilisk Station that Weber, Laumer's handpicked heir to the series proper, had a way with military sci-fi. This is not your usual such story: The battle is basically over already, but a Bolo dubbed ART who comes to the field determines that another Bolo, for the first time in Bolo history, fired on its -- "his" -- own side and fled like a coward. We get to read ART's logged thoughts in italics, interspersed with third-person narration surrounding the traitor, named LNC, who has the excuse of "brain" damage from battle. As ART hunts down LNC, hoping destruction will not be necessary, both Bolos have to analyze their chances with such wear and tear. Humans don't appear until near the end, but that's OK, because I was pretty riveted by the emotions of the Bolos, whom I could finally see as personalities rather than mere cool toys.
"Yesterday's Gods," John Mina and William R. Fortschen. More talkative than the Bolo this time is a ship's computer named Fay, who gets detached after a crash. She manages to translate for pilot George (more credibly than in Ringworld) when they run into the primitive descendants of space colonists who lost contact with outer worlds. The natives think George is a long-awaited savior who will help protect them from an imminent threat. They have a functional Bolo, and a select few have retained knowledge of what to do with it without understanding exactly why, but only George can complete the picture. Tales of mortal men getting mistaken for gods or messiahs usually take an ugly turn, but this is rather fun. And Fay is sassier than an AI has any right to be, to suit George's taste for repartee.
"Memories of Erin," Robert Greenberger. The only entirely first-person entry in the anthology had me confused at the first sentence: "Boy have I gotta pish badly." The speaker is not drunk; "pish" appears to be one of those literary euphemisms that I never encounter anywhere else, like "motherfouler." Colorful tomboy Erin is inside a virally compromised Bolo, yet she finds time to describe a lengthy flashback. I might as well tell you that despite the seeming playfulness of her diction, her story doesn't end well at all. The only good news is that she expects no one else to wind up in the same predicament.
"Hold Until Relieved," William H. Keith, Jr. While not the first sad story, it may be the first to make you feel sad for the Bolo. He doesn't know nearly as soon as we do, but for eons, he's been the only survivor of a war that rendered a planet uninhabitable to organics. Amazing aliens discover him in surprise and bring him out of inertia. He is not immediately cooperative with an unfamiliar species, and from his thoughts, we may debate whether he would have been better off not listening to their news.
"A Question of Valor," Todd Johnson. Ah, a mystery! I could use more tales of detectives in the distant future. Finaghey annoys other characters kinda like Columbo does, but he doesn't have the same charisma for readers. He's a little like Dr. Susan Calvin for figuring out how a seemingly rogue Bolo's mind must work. Hint: It's not another "traitor." I might have to read this one again to fully appreciate the explanation.
"In the Flesh," Steve Perry and John DeCamp. This may be my favorite overall. Once again, aliens revive a Bolo post-humanity, only this time they give him a human body, due to more availability of those raw materials. They're weird even for aliens, being ethereal and obscenely powerful yet looking to a single human to save them from a species that kills them without knowing it. What makes this story is seeing the ex-Bolo cope with a relatively pathetic chassis -- and think about an ancient female human companion in a new way. He'll take on the mission for the sake of her posthumous honor.
"And Don't Come Back," Mark Thies. Apart from love of a human, what does it take to get a Bolo to help nonhumans? Well, a common enemy helps. In the best illustration of a Bolo's multitasking capacity, this one acts friendly toward children in a peacetime capacity (pretty much necessary to get them to trust Bolos later) while simultaneously hacking computers way off in space. One of the focal characters is a possibly catlike lifelong slave surprised to find her irredeemable captors suddenly "complacent." The gratitude she must feel to that one machine! I kinda wish we got to hear more about her race after that. BTW, here we learn that all Bolos made after a certain point are gendered male in order to avoid making soldiers feel irrationally protective of them.
"A Time to Kill," David M. Weber. This is the other extra-long entry. As a result, its antiwar message feels all the more anvilicious. I wasn't particularly interested in the details of the ancient war. The important thing is that we have a new brand of Bolo who mentally merges with his commander. The Bolo in question looks back in shame on his bloodthirsty past, which sounds uncharacteristically nasty. Humans and doglike Melconians fight each other with about equal guilt and equal success. Now a farmboy, having called upon the Bolo for help after decades, tries to push him onward into more civilian genocide. Never before in this volume has a Bolo come so close to free will. How convenient mind-sharing can be. I admit that Weber has a point about mutual paranoia driving otherwise good people to kill each other, and it's not a bad idea to let the last full-fledged story be about a relatively pacifistic Bolo, but that doesn't quite make up for a forced setup.
"A Brief History of Human Expansion Beyond Concordiat Space and Subsequent Military Conflicts Between Alien Species, the Concordiat, and Human-Occupied 'Fringe Species,'" Linda Evans. Man, we finally get a female writer, and it's for the least readable section. Even the title looks like an imitation of publications from centuries ago instead of centuries from now. After that, it begins with a rather judgmental look back from long after the last Bolos, humorously citing Keith Laumer as a primary source. It's too broadly historical in style to read like a story, so I took to skimming. Then we get a tiny-print table of information on key Bolo battles, whose "records" I assume are named after chapters from other books; I skipped that part altogether. Finally, there's a bunch of info about various alien species, which I might care to read except that most of them don't turn up in the included stories. And why bother to denote their degrees of speciocentricity/xenophobia when none of them is below "apparently high"?
The last few pages advertise other space operas: the Honor Harrington series, Anne McCaffrey's Brainship novels, and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. I'm happy to say I've read and enjoyed one book of each and reviewed them all on this LJ. Kinda renews my interest in them. But I give a higher priority to checking out what Laumer himself wrote about Bolos. I want to see what they were like before physical and mental battery. After all, you don't really know Superman if you've seen him only in the presence of kryptonite.
In the meantime, I'm reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman, who's best known for A Man Called Ove. I don't think it's fantasy, but the protagonist is clearly familiar with popular fantasy, which is why my mom suggested it to me.
Bolos, FYI, are the ultimate sci-fi army tanks. Enormous, heavily armed and armored, and granted advanced AI. Obviously not beholden to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics if human nations use them against each other (tho later stories concentrate on alien battles), but they are programmed with unflinching loyalty to their given side. As the title suggests, these stories focus on Bolos that are nowhere near peak condition; in many cases, neither are the civilizations they defend.
"The Sixth Sun," S.M. Stirling. One of the two longest stories, but I'm not convinced that it had to be. It's rather politically incorrect, the main villain being a South American native pagan leader with a mean streak a mile wide -- and, thanks to unwise smugglers, a gun similarly wide. The unlikely heroes are a concussed man, his preteen son, and the surviving female (ex-)smuggler, seeking to cross the jungle and send word to a village to get its long-disused Bolo back in gear. (Not only had they not needed it in ages, but it served as a tomb for a lauded lieutenant.) The fun comes largely in the good guys' attitudes bouncing off each other. Unfortunately, the Bolo doesn't show its stuff or even talk much until the story is nearly over. Bad choice for an introduction.
"The Traitor," David M. Weber. I knew from On Basilisk Station that Weber, Laumer's handpicked heir to the series proper, had a way with military sci-fi. This is not your usual such story: The battle is basically over already, but a Bolo dubbed ART who comes to the field determines that another Bolo, for the first time in Bolo history, fired on its -- "his" -- own side and fled like a coward. We get to read ART's logged thoughts in italics, interspersed with third-person narration surrounding the traitor, named LNC, who has the excuse of "brain" damage from battle. As ART hunts down LNC, hoping destruction will not be necessary, both Bolos have to analyze their chances with such wear and tear. Humans don't appear until near the end, but that's OK, because I was pretty riveted by the emotions of the Bolos, whom I could finally see as personalities rather than mere cool toys.
"Yesterday's Gods," John Mina and William R. Fortschen. More talkative than the Bolo this time is a ship's computer named Fay, who gets detached after a crash. She manages to translate for pilot George (more credibly than in Ringworld) when they run into the primitive descendants of space colonists who lost contact with outer worlds. The natives think George is a long-awaited savior who will help protect them from an imminent threat. They have a functional Bolo, and a select few have retained knowledge of what to do with it without understanding exactly why, but only George can complete the picture. Tales of mortal men getting mistaken for gods or messiahs usually take an ugly turn, but this is rather fun. And Fay is sassier than an AI has any right to be, to suit George's taste for repartee.
"Memories of Erin," Robert Greenberger. The only entirely first-person entry in the anthology had me confused at the first sentence: "Boy have I gotta pish badly." The speaker is not drunk; "pish" appears to be one of those literary euphemisms that I never encounter anywhere else, like "motherfouler." Colorful tomboy Erin is inside a virally compromised Bolo, yet she finds time to describe a lengthy flashback. I might as well tell you that despite the seeming playfulness of her diction, her story doesn't end well at all. The only good news is that she expects no one else to wind up in the same predicament.
"Hold Until Relieved," William H. Keith, Jr. While not the first sad story, it may be the first to make you feel sad for the Bolo. He doesn't know nearly as soon as we do, but for eons, he's been the only survivor of a war that rendered a planet uninhabitable to organics. Amazing aliens discover him in surprise and bring him out of inertia. He is not immediately cooperative with an unfamiliar species, and from his thoughts, we may debate whether he would have been better off not listening to their news.
"A Question of Valor," Todd Johnson. Ah, a mystery! I could use more tales of detectives in the distant future. Finaghey annoys other characters kinda like Columbo does, but he doesn't have the same charisma for readers. He's a little like Dr. Susan Calvin for figuring out how a seemingly rogue Bolo's mind must work. Hint: It's not another "traitor." I might have to read this one again to fully appreciate the explanation.
"In the Flesh," Steve Perry and John DeCamp. This may be my favorite overall. Once again, aliens revive a Bolo post-humanity, only this time they give him a human body, due to more availability of those raw materials. They're weird even for aliens, being ethereal and obscenely powerful yet looking to a single human to save them from a species that kills them without knowing it. What makes this story is seeing the ex-Bolo cope with a relatively pathetic chassis -- and think about an ancient female human companion in a new way. He'll take on the mission for the sake of her posthumous honor.
"And Don't Come Back," Mark Thies. Apart from love of a human, what does it take to get a Bolo to help nonhumans? Well, a common enemy helps. In the best illustration of a Bolo's multitasking capacity, this one acts friendly toward children in a peacetime capacity (pretty much necessary to get them to trust Bolos later) while simultaneously hacking computers way off in space. One of the focal characters is a possibly catlike lifelong slave surprised to find her irredeemable captors suddenly "complacent." The gratitude she must feel to that one machine! I kinda wish we got to hear more about her race after that. BTW, here we learn that all Bolos made after a certain point are gendered male in order to avoid making soldiers feel irrationally protective of them.
"A Time to Kill," David M. Weber. This is the other extra-long entry. As a result, its antiwar message feels all the more anvilicious. I wasn't particularly interested in the details of the ancient war. The important thing is that we have a new brand of Bolo who mentally merges with his commander. The Bolo in question looks back in shame on his bloodthirsty past, which sounds uncharacteristically nasty. Humans and doglike Melconians fight each other with about equal guilt and equal success. Now a farmboy, having called upon the Bolo for help after decades, tries to push him onward into more civilian genocide. Never before in this volume has a Bolo come so close to free will. How convenient mind-sharing can be. I admit that Weber has a point about mutual paranoia driving otherwise good people to kill each other, and it's not a bad idea to let the last full-fledged story be about a relatively pacifistic Bolo, but that doesn't quite make up for a forced setup.
"A Brief History of Human Expansion Beyond Concordiat Space and Subsequent Military Conflicts Between Alien Species, the Concordiat, and Human-Occupied 'Fringe Species,'" Linda Evans. Man, we finally get a female writer, and it's for the least readable section. Even the title looks like an imitation of publications from centuries ago instead of centuries from now. After that, it begins with a rather judgmental look back from long after the last Bolos, humorously citing Keith Laumer as a primary source. It's too broadly historical in style to read like a story, so I took to skimming. Then we get a tiny-print table of information on key Bolo battles, whose "records" I assume are named after chapters from other books; I skipped that part altogether. Finally, there's a bunch of info about various alien species, which I might care to read except that most of them don't turn up in the included stories. And why bother to denote their degrees of speciocentricity/xenophobia when none of them is below "apparently high"?
The last few pages advertise other space operas: the Honor Harrington series, Anne McCaffrey's Brainship novels, and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. I'm happy to say I've read and enjoyed one book of each and reviewed them all on this LJ. Kinda renews my interest in them. But I give a higher priority to checking out what Laumer himself wrote about Bolos. I want to see what they were like before physical and mental battery. After all, you don't really know Superman if you've seen him only in the presence of kryptonite.
In the meantime, I'm reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman, who's best known for A Man Called Ove. I don't think it's fantasy, but the protagonist is clearly familiar with popular fantasy, which is why my mom suggested it to me.