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Imperium #4
Zone Yellow
.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
247 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
78 people want to read
About the author
Keith Laumer
497 books225 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 23, 2019
Usually I really like Mr. Laumer's work.
And the premise here is decent enough. Brion Bayard was once from our own timeline but became a citizen of the cross-time Imperium and an agent of Imperial Intelligence. But now, another world in the vast Skein of dimensions has discovered cross-time travel, and they are coming to invade the Imperium's Zero-Zero timeline.
But they are from Zone Yellow. And they are not human.
The problem here, I think, is that Mr. Laumer has forgotten how to get us to relate to his characters, and how to relate to epic adventure on the small scale. Bayard started off quite relatable in series' first book, Worlds of the Imperium. The, he was in a little over his head from the first page, but constantly rallied. Here, he always has something smart-mouthed to say and is overly prone to violence as a solution. Mr. Laumer further writes him as the smartest-man-in=the-room, often inconsistent with the plot progess (which, in itself, is inconsistent enough as it is).
And the premise here is decent enough. Brion Bayard was once from our own timeline but became a citizen of the cross-time Imperium and an agent of Imperial Intelligence. But now, another world in the vast Skein of dimensions has discovered cross-time travel, and they are coming to invade the Imperium's Zero-Zero timeline.
But they are from Zone Yellow. And they are not human.
The problem here, I think, is that Mr. Laumer has forgotten how to get us to relate to his characters, and how to relate to epic adventure on the small scale. Bayard started off quite relatable in series' first book, Worlds of the Imperium. The, he was in a little over his head from the first page, but constantly rallied. Here, he always has something smart-mouthed to say and is overly prone to violence as a solution. Mr. Laumer further writes him as the smartest-man-in=the-room, often inconsistent with the plot progess (which, in itself, is inconsistent enough as it is).
March 26, 2024
Okay, I know I swore in my review of the previous book in Laumer's "Imperium," Assignment in Nowhere, that there was "NO WAY I'm going anywhere near the 4th and final book in the series" (largely based on my growing disappointment with the series overall as well as the hellacious cover). But after my previous book - The Black Bats: CIA Spy Flights over China from Taiwan 1951-1969 - proved to be a bit challenging and textbooky (albeit fascinating), I decided I needed to follow that with something fluffy and dumb; and so when I saw this staring out at me recently at McKay's Used Books…well, 99 cents later there I was, and here we are.
Sadly, "fluffy and dumb" doesn't begin to describe this stinker. I wish I could say it was so bad that it was good in some sort of goofy or kitschy way, but in truth it was really so bad that it was just really bad. Plot makes no sense, characters make no sense, English- and Swedish-speaking rat/aliens make no sense…
The first three books of the "Imperium" were written in 1961, '65 and '68, before Laumer suffered a massive stroke in 1971. He eventually returned to writing, but as Wikipedia diplomatically puts it, "the quality of his work suffered, and his career declined." For whatever reason, Laumer returned to the Imperium in 1990 - a 22 year gap - for one of his final books; but, well…the world could have easily survived without this one.
That said, Laumer's concept of the multiverse "blight" is still pretty solid (see my review of Assigment for a quick summary of how that works), and so it would be nice to see a different author pick this up and run with it. But please - no more rat-people!
Sadly, "fluffy and dumb" doesn't begin to describe this stinker. I wish I could say it was so bad that it was good in some sort of goofy or kitschy way, but in truth it was really so bad that it was just really bad. Plot makes no sense, characters make no sense, English- and Swedish-speaking rat/aliens make no sense…
The first three books of the "Imperium" were written in 1961, '65 and '68, before Laumer suffered a massive stroke in 1971. He eventually returned to writing, but as Wikipedia diplomatically puts it, "the quality of his work suffered, and his career declined." For whatever reason, Laumer returned to the Imperium in 1990 - a 22 year gap - for one of his final books; but, well…the world could have easily survived without this one.
That said, Laumer's concept of the multiverse "blight" is still pretty solid (see my review of Assigment for a quick summary of how that works), and so it would be nice to see a different author pick this up and run with it. But please - no more rat-people!
April 20, 2015
review of
Keith Laumer's Zone Yellow
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 19, 2015
This is the 1st & only bk I've read of Laumer's written after he had a stroke in 1971. It was published in 1990. It's also part of a series that the last bk I read by him, Beyond the Imperium ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ), was a part of. Since a stroke or some other disabling thing can happen to just about anyone, myself included, I was hoping that this bk wd display Laumer's pre-stroke verve or, perhaps, some new touches of special intelligence - but I wasn't expecting it.
Alas, it was ok but not really anything new. The diplomat in Laumer, the person willing to ferret out a sympathetic POV for non-humans, is still in evidence. Even tho his hero's particular parallel world is being invaded by giant rats who're taking people as slaves, he still manages to not resort to genocide as the 'solution'.
"and reminded him that our side didn't murder helpless POWs.
""Helpless, hell, sir! Begging your pardon!" Helm burst out. "I've seen the rats swarming into town, eating folks alive!"
""Nevertheless, there's a hospital here," I told him. "And we're going to take this fellow—a general officer, by the way"—I was guessing, but that red stripe meant something—"over there and see what they can do."" - p 48
Ahh.. mercy & self-restraint - remember those? When it was part of the US PR image (if not in reality) to promote such traits? Before George W. Bush & Condoleezza Rice declared torture to be ok?! Those were the days!
& Laumer manages to do a few small things w/ language: ""'Tzl,'" the thing corrected. Gan none of you mongs learn to speag corregly?"" (p 13) Otherwise, much of the bk seems like something a(n un)creative writing student wd 'correct' for their job at the publishers. I wonder how much trouble H. G. Wells had w/ publishers suggesting rewrites of his work? War of the Worlds, eg.
""No wonder these rats don't show any fight, Colonel," Helm said. "They're sick." He nodded, agreeing with himself.
""Times we saw 'em in heaps," he added. "It explains that. Say, Colonel," he went on, 'you s'pose it's like in that book: they caught some kinda disease here they couldn't handle?"" - p 49
The rat general speaks: ""It is the high privilege and manifest destiny of the Noble Folk to occupy and make use of all suitable planes of the multi-ordinal All,"" (p 56) Laumer almost seems 'old-fashioned' here. To someone like myself, such imperialist justification parody is easy to relate to. I wonder: how many younger readers even recognize it as such?
The parallel universe stuff gives Laumer a chance to be a bit more surreal & to explore human fears of the mutated body: "Helm had gone back to watching the horrors on the screen: a vast heap of pale-veined flesh now, with human limbs and heads growing from it like warts. He wanted to know how such monstrosities could be." (p 82)
&, like most sequels, Laumer references predecessors, such as Beyond the Imperium, just like I did earlier in this review. Are Keith Laumer & I the same person?: "a humanoid species called the Xonijeel; maintained their own Interdimensional Monitor Service" (pp 82-83) &, Olivia, in the same Imperium bk, was influenced by an Oz bk just like the young princess is here: ""I think it would be lovely to be a real princess," she told me. She looked warmly at Helm. "Candy told me all about a place called Oz, and about Princess Ozma. I want to be like her." (p 159)
Alas, Laumer's bubbling volcanic zest for similes ain't much in evidence. The 1st one I noticed wasn't until p 92: "I was furious with myself, first for being weak as American beer, and second for being not able to handle it." At least I can honestly say that American beer brewing has progressed in leaps & bounds even if all-too-little else has.
& newish ideas seem largely lacking but this tidbit caught my fancy in its revolving door & ripped it off of me: "As a wisp of fog shifted I saw a shape, something that didn't belong in that landscape: a boxy, ornately decorated coach that needed only four handsome black geldings hitched to it to make an appropriate equipage for a queen."
"There was a white-wrapped bundle on the seat. A wail came from it.
"Djäveln!" Helm blurted. "A baby!"
"I stepped across into the coach, the physical contact with our shuttle creating an entropic seal that held back the external environment. The pink halo rippled, but held. It was temporal leakage from the imperfect temporal seal. I picked up the soft, blanket-wrapped bundle and looked at the face of a baby Ylokk." - p 100
All in all, the whole danged thing was very Alice in Wonderoutlandish: ""You don't understand, Colonel," he told me in a voice that was tight with anxiety, or whatever it was tight with. "We are in a most perilous situation. To be candid, I have attempted an experiment. I have transferred us across the Yellow Line, into the zone of the hypothetical["]" (p 150) To be Candide is to be tight.
Keith Laumer's Zone Yellow
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 19, 2015
This is the 1st & only bk I've read of Laumer's written after he had a stroke in 1971. It was published in 1990. It's also part of a series that the last bk I read by him, Beyond the Imperium ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ), was a part of. Since a stroke or some other disabling thing can happen to just about anyone, myself included, I was hoping that this bk wd display Laumer's pre-stroke verve or, perhaps, some new touches of special intelligence - but I wasn't expecting it.
Alas, it was ok but not really anything new. The diplomat in Laumer, the person willing to ferret out a sympathetic POV for non-humans, is still in evidence. Even tho his hero's particular parallel world is being invaded by giant rats who're taking people as slaves, he still manages to not resort to genocide as the 'solution'.
"and reminded him that our side didn't murder helpless POWs.
""Helpless, hell, sir! Begging your pardon!" Helm burst out. "I've seen the rats swarming into town, eating folks alive!"
""Nevertheless, there's a hospital here," I told him. "And we're going to take this fellow—a general officer, by the way"—I was guessing, but that red stripe meant something—"over there and see what they can do."" - p 48
Ahh.. mercy & self-restraint - remember those? When it was part of the US PR image (if not in reality) to promote such traits? Before George W. Bush & Condoleezza Rice declared torture to be ok?! Those were the days!
& Laumer manages to do a few small things w/ language: ""'Tzl,'" the thing corrected. Gan none of you mongs learn to speag corregly?"" (p 13) Otherwise, much of the bk seems like something a(n un)creative writing student wd 'correct' for their job at the publishers. I wonder how much trouble H. G. Wells had w/ publishers suggesting rewrites of his work? War of the Worlds, eg.
""No wonder these rats don't show any fight, Colonel," Helm said. "They're sick." He nodded, agreeing with himself.
""Times we saw 'em in heaps," he added. "It explains that. Say, Colonel," he went on, 'you s'pose it's like in that book: they caught some kinda disease here they couldn't handle?"" - p 49
The rat general speaks: ""It is the high privilege and manifest destiny of the Noble Folk to occupy and make use of all suitable planes of the multi-ordinal All,"" (p 56) Laumer almost seems 'old-fashioned' here. To someone like myself, such imperialist justification parody is easy to relate to. I wonder: how many younger readers even recognize it as such?
The parallel universe stuff gives Laumer a chance to be a bit more surreal & to explore human fears of the mutated body: "Helm had gone back to watching the horrors on the screen: a vast heap of pale-veined flesh now, with human limbs and heads growing from it like warts. He wanted to know how such monstrosities could be." (p 82)
&, like most sequels, Laumer references predecessors, such as Beyond the Imperium, just like I did earlier in this review. Are Keith Laumer & I the same person?: "a humanoid species called the Xonijeel; maintained their own Interdimensional Monitor Service" (pp 82-83) &, Olivia, in the same Imperium bk, was influenced by an Oz bk just like the young princess is here: ""I think it would be lovely to be a real princess," she told me. She looked warmly at Helm. "Candy told me all about a place called Oz, and about Princess Ozma. I want to be like her." (p 159)
Alas, Laumer's bubbling volcanic zest for similes ain't much in evidence. The 1st one I noticed wasn't until p 92: "I was furious with myself, first for being weak as American beer, and second for being not able to handle it." At least I can honestly say that American beer brewing has progressed in leaps & bounds even if all-too-little else has.
& newish ideas seem largely lacking but this tidbit caught my fancy in its revolving door & ripped it off of me: "As a wisp of fog shifted I saw a shape, something that didn't belong in that landscape: a boxy, ornately decorated coach that needed only four handsome black geldings hitched to it to make an appropriate equipage for a queen."
"There was a white-wrapped bundle on the seat. A wail came from it.
"Djäveln!" Helm blurted. "A baby!"
"I stepped across into the coach, the physical contact with our shuttle creating an entropic seal that held back the external environment. The pink halo rippled, but held. It was temporal leakage from the imperfect temporal seal. I picked up the soft, blanket-wrapped bundle and looked at the face of a baby Ylokk." - p 100
All in all, the whole danged thing was very Alice in Wonderoutlandish: ""You don't understand, Colonel," he told me in a voice that was tight with anxiety, or whatever it was tight with. "We are in a most perilous situation. To be candid, I have attempted an experiment. I have transferred us across the Yellow Line, into the zone of the hypothetical["]" (p 150) To be Candide is to be tight.
October 29, 2012
This was a strange book. It was definitely an Imperium novel, but it was about an invasion by rat-men. I'd read really bad reviews of it, but I liked it. Not my fave, but far from horrible. Since the prior book in the series was written 22 years earlier ('68 compared to '90), I'm honestly surprised it matched the series as well as it did.
Still, Zone Yellow was much more about the invasion, and about stoking the flames of unrest among the rat-men than about the dimension-jumping that's central to the series. There were important plot-points based around dimensional travel, so it was more than an afterthought, but...I would have preferred more dimension-related pontificating and less down-with-the-man. Enjoyable, but a slightly disappointing way to finish a series.
Still, Zone Yellow was much more about the invasion, and about stoking the flames of unrest among the rat-men than about the dimension-jumping that's central to the series. There were important plot-points based around dimensional travel, so it was more than an afterthought, but...I would have preferred more dimension-related pontificating and less down-with-the-man. Enjoyable, but a slightly disappointing way to finish a series.
June 16, 2022
Well, this last one in the series was a bit of a slog. It wasn't bad, just longer than it needed to be. The series was good, though. I enjoyed it. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien from Diaspora for the heads up about this author. :)
January 26, 2019
Back to old mainstream SF and what a read. Enjoined a solid adventure!
January 7, 2024
Unfortunately I have to say this novel has become too dated to be fully enjoyable. Keith Laundry works have been some of my favorites, and many still are... But not this one.
April 1, 2017
This is the 4th book in the Imperium series by Keith Laumer. This one was written over 20 years after the first three and I wish I could say it was as good as the first three but it isn't. It isn't bad but I just didn't enjoy it as well. In this one the Zero Zero line is attacked by a race of intelligent Rat People from another line. They are dying from a dreadful disease and are desperate to escape their line, at least that is what we are lead to believe to begin with. Brion Bayard finds a doctor who has developed a cure for as well as a virus of the disease. He takes a shuttle with the doctor and another volunteer to the Rats' home line with the intent of infecting them and stopping their invasion. He develops an attitude of wanting to help them instead and goes to great lengths to do so. I am glad I read this book as I recently re-read the first three and I had never read this one before. I must caution you however, do not read this one unless you have read the first three because it would make very little since. If however you have read the first three and just want to complete the series then I would recommend reading it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews