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Just back from a weekend trip to attend our daughter's graduation. I brought along my JetBook Lite as well as a couple of old issues of Galaxy and If magazine that I picked up in the used book store. One of them was the October, 1965, issue of If with the first of three installments of Keith Laumer's Retief's War. I can remember buying this issue when I was in eighth grade, after school at the local pharmacy's magazine stand, but I never read the Retief story. I'm a big fan of Keith Laumer, but I've never really been a fan of his Retief novels.
This time I decided to give it a shot. I didn't have the subsequent issues with me, but I did have the Baen ebook Retief! on my JBL, and I was able to continue the story there. Bottom line: I'm still not a Retief fan. It starts out good -- even very good -- but the satire is too broad and heavy-handed. Also, his handling of the uncivilized aliens, and the sudden (and unnecessary?) appearance of a spaceship full of attractive young women, were way too clumsy.
It also highlighted something that I find pretty sad. The illustrations to the original serial in If were done by Jack Gaughan and do a very good job of making the concept of wheeled aliens a little less unimaginable. When stories from the old pulps are collected for new anthologies I wish publishers would put a greater premium on including the original illustrations.
Anyway, I decided to try a safer bet for my next read. I've started Baen's The Universe Twister, a collection of Keith Laumer's three Lafayette O'Leary novels. I read the first one, The Time Bender, many years ago and remember liking it.
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