I remember that story.

Funny thing is it was 'finished' two different ways. The first I read he sent the rest of the crew to the stars, in the second he woke them and they used the ship and their old-time knowledge to restart civilization.

Ah. The only one I recall was the "Returning Fire to the Gods" ending. I would have kinda liked the alternate "Let's Rebuild Civilization" finish, especially if they could have pulled the "Phoenix" thing like in that Star Trek movie.

Same here, I always thought it was kind of a dick move to launch the mission without its commander.

Yeah. It was a different era though in the early 1970s and science fiction of the period reflected an "Anti Government" theme, so by staying behind, the mission commander most likely felt he could take control of the system and change things for the good. My guess.

Now I wonder when they made that change at the end?

I've read a couple of the Bolo stories, but not this one. Should dig it up. Keith Laumer, you said?

I believe it was Keith Laumer, the author who also penned the "Retief" series, but my Memory Isn't as sharp as it once was. The Bolo stories go back to the 1970s I believe. One series of stories was published recently, post mortem by his Author-Fans.

The BOLO stories are worth a read, in my opinion. I've reread Laumer's BOLO stuff multiple times.

I've missed out on the new stuff published after the Author's death though. I always felt the stories from the original book would make a great comic series.

Oh yeah, I concur. The first BOLO tale I read was 'The Last Command' which is pretty heavy story.

There's two different versions of the story. One was the short story "Night of the Trolls" referenced above. The other expanded the idea into a full-length novel "The Stars Must Wait," which felt a little long to me, and tried to do world-building. Laumer was better at the short-story form, though I really enjoyed "A Plague of Demons."

the plow on the front makes me think of a retief story i don't remember what it was called,
where there was some sort of arms deal being passed off as agricultural machinery.

Ohhhh Yes! "Relic of War." One of my favorites which got me hooked on the Bolo Series in the first place.

I take that back. The Retief Story I recall with a war surplus Bolo in it featured a cook named "Chip" on a planet with beautiful "Swedish" looking people that were slightly telepathic. Cuss it if I can think of the title.

Bolo's appear in at least two stories.. though they are always presented as Manned tanks, rather than AI. (side effect of the stories being written before much of the bolo series, and before the bolo series added terms like 'golem' to differentiate between manned and AI bolo type vehicles)

***warning: spoilers***





in "Courier" Retief has to deliver important military data to a human world threatened by lobster like aliens, and the human turncoats serving the aliens attempt to deploy a manned bolo trying to stop him. this is the one with the guy named chip and the vaguely Scandinavian planetary populace.

in "Cultural Exchange" he averts a war by manipulating assignments for the department that makes up the title. one human world was trying to conquer another 'under the table' by shipping in "tractors" (Bolo's with plowblades for demolition work) and sending their crews to the world as "college exchange students".. to a world that only has one small college and can't handled thousands of 'exchange students'. he avoids it by redirecting the 'exchange students' to another world that needs manpower for its harvest. thus ensuring that not only would the war not happen, but the planet being targeted for takeover would get their hands on the "tractors" and have the firepower to prevent any future efforts.

cultural exchange was the one i was thinking of. pretty sure i read it in analog sometime in the 70s, whenever it was.

I'm glad you like it. I might just attack this Beastie with color pencils later on.

Oh, that's a neat rendition of that Mark of BOLO- and a superb story, too.

Yeah. I couldn't recall if it was a Mk 2 or 3, but in the story the attacking bolo was "One step up, and one step back." The designers decided to put all the newer bolo's sensors into a single "Cyclops" pod, and here the attacker was throwing missiles and Gatling gun rounds at the older Bolo, but the mission commander blinded the adversary with a "Pea Shooter." (Infinite Repeaters.)

Yeah, I've got Laumer's 'Compleat BOLO' in softcover. The story is pretty heavy, from the discovery the world went to hell, to his son, and that desperate final fight with his long-dead crewmate riding shotgun . . .

Oh yeah. "Hello Mac." He could tell it was his long dead friend because of the big, bushy red moustache still clinging to the Mummy's upper lip.

Yeah, I need to read the variant ending at some point.

i think the lesser troll was a Mk.II, while the greater Troll "the baron" had was a Mk.III


checks my copy of "the night of the trolls" - yeah. the bolo guarding the base was a MK.II (which had all but expended its anti-personnel weapon ammunition), while "The Baron Trollmaster of Filly" had a MK.III



i've occasionally wondered why they never compiled that story and the trilogy from the later writers about the army unit down in South America and the Mk.III Bolo that got attached to them. they were wonderful post-apoc type stories, taking place during and after WW3 and the collapse of civilization.

though those i think portrayed the MK.III a bit differently, due to the backstory of Bolo's being filled out a bit more.

Way cool Steam...

V.

Thanks. I still want to work on this one a bit more though.

I feel bad that my first thought was 'Mul-ti-PASS!'

MuuuuAHaHaHa! Yeah. Mr. Laumer invented that 30 years before it came into use at Gas Stations and toll booths.

I gotta show you this. New Soviet Tanks have the Shtora Active protective system which might force me to re-draw this image. Greebly it up some more.

http://defense-update.com/wp-conten...../shtora725.jpg

Jeepers! Look at those peepers! That's properly Greebled alright! Also, thank you for introducing me to the word Greeble!

I dunno... To me those big, pink lights just say, "Shoot here... And Here."

On a similar note, I was playing with the idea in my comic "Burning Stone" that the wolf like Lycalli who are mostly color blind in the ultra violet color range discovered using big "Black Light" searchlights which made hidden humans in uniform shine brightly, but it also created a big, deep purple "Bulls Eye" on their AFVs that Humans could easily see... From Miles away.

Good point, anything that emits is something that's likely to draw fire, though in some cases that can be useful!
Is "Burning Stone" a WIP or available in some place? Your example reminds me of something from the 'Man-Kzin Wars' series, it was a note from when the two species first started clashing and had very little information about the other, found it- "During the second war, when there was real combat rather than conquest, it had taken considerable time for the combatants to realize that human eyes identify shapes, while kzinti eyes detect motion - so that, at first, both had used camouflage gear that was guaranteed to stand out to the enemy's vision." Good details to include!

The original Burning Stone comic appeared in Huzzah! Fanzine in the mid 1990s, and as far as I know, has never been posted on line. I was criticized highly because of the comic, but that didn't keep me from drawing further images of Warrn Greyback and his buddies and their wartime in the comic. This is one of the few color pieces that have been posted here on FA.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/216803/

Also, loads of little black and white spot illos featuring the Lycalli appear in the CA Kit Fox art archives hosted by Bernard Doove on his Chakat's Den website.

http://www.chakatsden.com/cakitfox/

I'm going to have to read those "Man K'zin" war stories by Larry Niven as I've always liked the cover art.

That's a proper thousand-yard-stare on him, well-portrayed! Ah, another repository, fun to dive into!
They're pretty good, a nice range of characters with varying points of view on the conflict and the peace that followed as well as some interesting stories exploring deeper plots and other alien races that have their own reasons to want man and kzin at war! I've not read them all yet, or explored that universe further in books not of that series, but it had some interesting background threads here and there! And yes, the cover art is what caught my eye at the library.
Have you read any of Robert Asprin's series? He did the many Myth Adventures, Phule's Company, Duncan and Mallory (as a co-author, I think?), and the Griffen McCandles series which features dragons, gambling, and the importance of family, and which I enjoyed the first three books of, still need to read the last one! Well, enough rambling from me, time to browse!

I had a feeling you'd enjoy the older art in the "Den" Archives. Yes, I had given thoughts of Waarn returning from the inter-planetary war, setting back in and raising a family.

No... I had missed a LOT of the authors and titles you mentioned, and my fellow Science Fiction Fans have told me Aspirin, McCaffrey, and McCandles' works are very good. When it came to "Science Fantasy" though, I preferred the "Bubblegum for the brain" styles of Piers Anthony's "Magic of Xanth" series, and most recently had been introduced to Terry Pratchett's works.

Mr. Anthony did write some good "Nuts and bolts" type Science Fiction too. The last one I read in that genre was "Prostho Plus" about a Dentist who gets "Abducted" and flies about the galaxy fixing teeth of aliens along the way.

Yeah, enjoying your tribal foxtaur pieces at the moment! So many worlds to explore, love it! Though I miss having a description (aside from title) and a place to comment (when I have something to say and the energy to do so).

Xanth was fun, though I may have liked the books in the middle of that series better than the early or late ones, those were more of a book-by-book on whether I'd get a real kick out of them but it was interesting following the threads of recurring character's stories even if a particular book wasn't as enjoyable as I'd hoped. Oh yes, The Discworld is one of my favorites, you'll have a good time there!

I'd not heard of those, maybe they got over-shadowed by Xanth, now I'll have to look those up! Thanks!

Ah, yes. The Stars Must Wait.

Aha! You solved the Mystery. "The Stars must Wait" was a re-telling of the original "Trolls" tale which was included in the original "Bolo" series, and then re-written and released in 1990. Now I'll have to read that one to see how they expanded it.

Looking at the cover art by Laurence Schwinger, it looks like he plopped a "Da Vinci" tank atop an M-1 Abrams and fattened up the main gun into a "Hellbore." I guess he was working under a deadline.

Awesome work. Love Laumer's Bolo series (as well as the Retief series). Weber has done some superb stories in the Bolo universe. Long live the Dinochrome Brigade!

I believe what made the Bolo stories unique was that these mythical battle machines became Characters and not just mere sentient tanks. One of the reasons I liked "Relic of War" was because the town "Mascot" BB-Y or "Bobby" sat for decades on the edge of town, barely functional. Only when a government agent tried to deactivate the machine the carrier signal accidentally activated an alien war machine. Of course "Bobby" saves the town, which was a fitting end as the battle machine's final act.

This reminded me very much of the 'man in front of tank' photo from the 1989 Tianenmen Square protests, but from a much different angle.

Oh yeah. A different age... A different time. But still very much the same.

LAUMER LIVES!

I do love that story, also... Laumer really let his imagination go on that one.

I think this story is another derivative:

http://robsrice.deviantart.com/art/.....iant-447151880

Just to be a pill, though, the Lesser Troll was a Mk. II and Mac was still at her faithful controls.

Now wait a minute. Okay, I agree with you about the designations of the Battle Machines in question as I do recall the machines were "One up" from each other. "Mac" I recall from the story published in the 1970s had a "Bushy Mustache" though. So in this new version "Mac" was written up as a Woman? Interesting.

Oh dear, the only version I know of is the one in Laumer's original book. Mac was male, another revived astronaut who'd gotten wounded, crawled into the Mk. II, and programmed it to defend the base before he bled to death. The narrator found his body in the Bolo, hand still clinging to the control yoke.

Oh. Right, right, right. Although I would like to read the revised novel just to see what changes had been made from the original short story. Mr. Laumer died shortly after I got into "Furry" fandom, and I've always regretted never having the chance to meet the man. I believe we might have had quite a bit of subjects to chat about because I just read I his Wiki Biography that he was an officer in the US Air Force, and he had designed several flying model airplanes. I believe I might have built one or two in my Teen years before my interests switched to drawing comic art.

Laumer had an edge to him-- Rogue Bolo was his last, and it was superb, and the Retief stuff was always such fun. The World Bender trilogy also had its points. He was horribly injured in a car wreck and went downhill after that. Some of the post-Laumer Bolo stuff looks good.

Love me some Bolos. I built one in HO scale years ago using an HO scale BL-2 locomotive on tank treads...

An honest yo Laumer "Tank" engine eh? Ever see this rig someone cobbled up?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tQNd4iEFTkk/hqdefault.jpg

Ha! No, I hadn't...