Keith Laumer Books in Order

A drifter called Legion meets Foster, a wealthy man whose diary records events centuries in the past. Their encounter draws Legion into a mystery that threatens to overturn everything he understands about his life.

Humanity lives inside protective cocoons, sustained by machines and absorbed in programmed experiences. When interruptions disturb one man’s artificial world, he begins confronting the possibility that the physical environment outside his cocoon can no longer be ignored.

John Bravais undergoes surgery to become strong enough to confront the doglike creatures threatening humanity. His secret mission grows more dangerous as seemingly human opponents help conceal the invaders and their plans.

Chester inherits a decaying mansion and an enormous tax bill, making a sale seem unavoidable. Then he discovers Genie, a computer capable of creating situations from other times, and his financial predicament takes an extraordinary turn.

After devastating earthquakes destroy civilization, Mal Irish receives a mysterious gold coin from a dying man. Following its clues leads him toward strange survivors, an alien language, and a city beneath the sea.

Raised by aliens long after humanity’s defeat, Roan sets out to recover his human heritage and find Earth. The powerful Niss stand between him and the lost homeworld he hopes to rediscover.

Televisions announce that Earth has a new government, even when their owners turn them off. The courteous, yellow-clad Monitors impose their rule without bloodshed, leaving humanity struggling to understand or resist its mysterious new masters.

An accidental experiment in self-hypnosis sends draftsman Lafayette O’Leary into Artesia, a feudal world of dragons and royalty. His unexpected new life offers adventure and romance, provided he can survive its dangers.

A general hoping for promotion faces a mysterious contraption that refuses to cooperate. His ambitions run into an unusual obstacle as he tries to assert control over something he does not understand.

Seeking shelter from a blizzard, Billy Danger climbs into what appears to be a corn silo. It is actually an alien spacecraft, and he awakens far from Earth with an unexpected interstellar journey ahead.

Nine science-fiction stories place resourceful people against hostile systems, alien tests and unsettling future societies. From an apparently infallible placement process to a home whose occupant cannot leave, familiar frustrations become challenges of survival, identity and freedom.

Two veteran adventurers risk their lives investigating an unexplored planet. The chance to unravel its mysteries draws them into a dangerous expedition across an unfamiliar world.

Flora grows increasingly isolated as her husband replaces their home’s walls with immersive electronic environments. What he sees as an improvement in everyday life threatens her connection with the real world and her ability to escape its artificial substitute.

Five science fiction stories combine space adventure and comic invention, including The Body Builders, The Planet Wreckers and The War with the Yukks. The collection also brings together The Star-Sent Knaves and Goobereality.

Two science fiction adventures pair an authoritarian Earth controlled by Eternity Incorporated with an isolated frontier planet dominated by a volcano. The Day Before Forever and Thunderhead explore danger in very different imagined futures.

Two ancient, superhuman enemies bring their long conflict to an unstable nuclear plant. As their confrontation escalates, the threatened destruction of the facility puts the entire Earth in danger.

Jeff Mallory wakes to a town of sleepwalking people and a giant tower reaching skyward. As the remnants of the army struggle to respond, the apparent invasion reveals an enemy far stranger than a foreign power.

Bored with life in Artesia, Lafayette O’Leary finds himself in another world populated by giants, pirates, and familiar faces with hostile intentions. He must navigate its strange technology and find a way home.

Time agent Ravel is stationed in 1936 to repair interference with history, but an urgent summons takes him to a Jurassic outpost. An attack by forces from another future plunges him into a dangerous temporal struggle.

Florin accepts a bodyguard assignment involving a politician whose apparent escape is part of his treatment. Entering a mysterious machine draws Florin into shifting realities where the true nature of his job becomes increasingly uncertain.

Six science fiction stories bring together In the Queue, A Relic of War, The Big Show, Message to an Alien, The Plague and Test to Destruction. The collection gathers shorter works originally published around the end of the 1960s.

Adam wakes in an alley without memories or an understanding of ordinary human life. Driven to survive, he learns with extraordinary speed, and his growing abilities threaten to outstrip the people around him.

Lafayette O’Leary keeps slipping between worlds and identities, becoming everything from a gypsy to a birdman. Returning home brings a new problem when he discovers a tyrannical double occupying his place.

Five science fiction tales center on journeys beyond ordinary time and reality. The collection brings together The Timesweepers, The Devil You Don’t, The Time Thieves, The Other Sky and Mind Out of Time.

Alien pressure on humanity’s borders gives Terran hardliners an opportunity to turn naval exercises into real war. Their determination to confront the Hukk threatens both peace in space and the government at home.

Framed for murder and forced from the Navy, Ban Tarleton becomes entangled in the death of a friend and a mysterious discovery on an asteroid. He searches for a weakness in the powerful Star Lords.

A petty thief becomes the subject of an experiment that gives him access to humanity’s accumulated knowledge and skills. His extraordinary new abilities open possibilities far beyond crime, including the temptation to seize enormous power.

After a three-year journey, the colony ship Omega reaches an unexplored planet and begins unloading its passengers and supplies. Then the vessel disappears, leaving humanity’s first venture among the stars facing an uncertain future.

Excerpts from sixteen Keith Laumer novels appear alongside his own accounts of their backgrounds. The collection offers a view of his fiction through both the selected passages and his reflections on how the stories came about.

Lafayette O’Leary’s world disappears, possibly through his own reality-shifting powers. Searching for his wife and a route back to Artesia, he encounters increasingly bizarre dangers and seeks whoever controls these transformations.

A soldier survives an alien mind probe and learns secrets that could save humanity from the Gool. Returning home, he is branded a traitor and must evade his own side long enough to use what he knows.

Fleeing a government intent on taking his fortune and his life, Marl Judson crashes on a planet where time behaves unpredictably. An opportunity to build an ideal society emerges, but his former persecutors threaten it.

Roger Tyson and his friends are swept through time as powerful beings fight for control of the universe. Encounters with pirates and other displaced travelers complicate their desperate search for a route back to their own era.

Interplanetary adventures test diplomats, commanders, and the meaning of reality in this four-story collection. Jame Retief faces bureaucratic blunders and dangerous alien protocol, while other travelers confront mutiny and unsettling questions about their worlds.

Jackson volunteers for an experiment in suspended animation and wakes eighty years later to a ruined world. With the help of a powerful Bolo tank, he faces the challenge of restoring humanity’s future.

Returning to his hometown, Jimmy Tremaine encounters mysterious Bram and a struggle against beings threatening Earth from beyond it. Strange technology and Bram’s long presence draw Jimmy into a conflict whose consequences reach across time.

A secret mission reveals aliens harvesting human brains for distant wars, leaving one man fighting to expose their control. This collection combines that novel with shorter adventures involving hostile worlds, isolated defenders and humans tested by unfamiliar powers.

Earth’s survival depends on a starship finding a long-lost human colony, but its commander faces mutiny before he can complete the mission. Hostile encounters and a divided crew force him to fight for a future his passengers are losing faith in.

Two science fiction tales follow an assassin blamed for a crime he did not commit and an Earth under alien rule. The collection pairs personal danger with humanity’s struggle against powers beyond its own world.