Keith Laumer

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Keith Laumer

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37 Quotations from Keith Laumer

alternate reality n. 1968 K. Laumer Assignment in Nowhere 51 Uncrossable, that is, until the year 1897, when two Italian scientists, Maxoni and Cocini, stumbled on a principle which changed the course of history—of a billion histories. They created a field in which the energy of normal temporal flow was deflected at what we may consider right angles to the normal direction. Objects and individuals enclosed in the field then moved, not forward in time as in nature, but across the lines of alternate reality.
alternate world n. 1968 K. Laumer Assignment in Nowhere 51 From that beginning grew the Imperium—the government claiming sovereignty over the entire Net of alternate worlds. Your world—which is known to us as Blight Insular Three—is but one of the uncountable parallel universes, each differing only infinitesimally from its neighbor.
armorplast n. 1964 K. Laumer Thunderhead in Galaxy Science Fiction Apr. 41/2 By putting his face flat against the armorplast panel he was able to see the ship, now a flaring fireball dropping in along a wide approach curve.
armorplast n. 1965 K. Laumer Retief, God-Speaker in Worlds of If Jan. 107 The skin is an inch thick and tougher than armorplast.
automatics n. 1964 K. Laumer King of the City in Galaxy Aug. 106/2 I rolled off the belt and looked around. The whole space was packed with automatics; the Blue Tower was a self-sufficient city in itself. I recognized generators, heat pumps, air plants. None of them were operating. The city services were all still functioning, apparently. What it would be like in another ten or twenty years of anarchy was anybody’s guess. But when the city systems failed the Blue Tower could go on on its own.
beamer n. 1966 K. Laumer Truce or Consequences in Worlds of If Nov. 19/1 The high walls… reared up behind a dense barrier of wickedly thorned shark trees. Retief used a small pocket beamer to slice a narrow path through into the grounds.
blast rifle n. 1967 K. Laumer Retief, War Criminal in Worlds of If Apr. 66/2 Retief backed to the shrine, unlimbered the blast rifle, swung it to cover the throng which halted, facing him.
Callistan adj. 1966 K. Laumer & R. G. Brown Earthblood in Worlds of If July xxxviii. 135/1 A deep, recorded voice spoke from a slot beneath the display: ‘This was Vice-Admiral Stephen Murdoch, as he appeared in his last solido, taken only moments before he embarked on his last, heroic mission. Admiral Murdoch is renowned as the hero of the Battle of Ceres and of the Siege of the Callistan Redoubts. He was lost in space in the year eleven thousand, four hundred and two of the Atomic Era.’
Clarke orbit n. 1976 K. Laumer in Analog Dec. 175/1, I just read and like the July issue, incidentally noticing that both Arthur Clarke and Norman Spinrad made use of a term which I have long considered unnecessarily clumsy, to wit ‘synchronous’, as ‘geo-synchronous orbit’. For some time in my work I have employed the term ‘Clarke orbit’, which is simple and gives Arthur the credit due to him. I hereby propose that you throw the weight of Analog behind this usage, and pretty soon everybody will say ‘Clarke orbit’.
Clarke orbit n. 1969 K. Laumer And Now They Wake in Galaxy Mar. 20/1 The meteorologist on duty in the United States Weather Satellite in Clarke orbit twenty-two thousand miles above the Atlantic had watched the anomalous formation for half an hour on the big twelve-power screen before calling it to the attention of his supervisor.
conapt n. 1968 K. Laumer Once There Was a Giant in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Nov. 14/2 He went to a shelf, lifted down a pack the size and shape of a climate unit for a five room conapt.
dirtside n. 1991 K. Laumer Judson's Eden 218 The sound channel crackled and said, loudly, ‘You, there, dirtside! Speak up!’
Earthside n. 1991 K. Laumer Judson's Eden 26 I've got a report from Earthside—‘unauthorized departure from a court-ordered detention in a Class Five facility’—some kind of faked-up hospital.
energy screen n. 1960 K. Laumer Combat Unit in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Nov. 62/1 But I cannot lie idle under attack. I no longer have my great ion-guns, my disruptors, my energy screens; but I have my fighting instinct.
galaxy-wide adv. 1965 K. Laumer Retief’s War in If Oct. 12/1 Technically, the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne is dedicated to the protection of Terran interests, Galaxy-wide.
helicab n. 1964 K. Laumer in If Nov. 7/1 It was ten minutes past high noon when I paid off my helicab, ducked under the air blast from the caged high-speed rotors…and looked around at the sun-scalded, dust-white, mob-noisy bazaar of the trucial camp-city of Tamboula, Republic of Free Algeria.
hull v. 1965 K. Laumer Retief’s War in Worlds of If Oct. 26/1 It looks as though the rock that hulled us did more than take out the tracker. I have no horizontal gyros, and damned little control in my left corrector banks.
hull v. 1966 K. Laumer & R. G. Brown Earthblood in Worlds of If Science Fiction July 158/1 There was a ship—oh, old, old, it was, Roan! Hulled in Deep Space by a rock half as big as a lifeboat, and drifting through space and centuries—until I found it. There was the body of a Man, frozen in an instant as the rock opened her decks to space.
in-system adv. 1961 K. Laumer Stranger in Paradox in Fantastic Aug. 74/2 Yes; and there are absolutely no defenses. This ship is the only armed one between here and Station Seven, a week’s run in-system.
light n. 2 1966 K. Laumer & R. G. Brown Earthblood in Worlds of If June 138/2 And four lights away, the Niss blockade of Terra still stands!
mindlink n. 1970 K. Laumer Seeds of Gonyl in Worlds of If Nov. 139/1 Riane must have aged and died long, long ago. His family would have grown to adulthood while he aged not at all. In the end it would have been necessary for him to ‘die’ or to disappear, to be believed dead, never to reappear. But he could have maintained knowledge of his descendants. He could have seen to your care and established a mind[-]link with you in infancy, before the pattern of acculturation made such contact impossible
needler n. 1964 K. Laumer in Worlds of If Science Fiction Nov. 20/2 In a buttoned-down pocket, I found a 2 mm needler, smaller and lighter than the standard Navy model I normally carried.
out-system n. 1967 K. Laumer Spaceman! in Worlds of If June 113/2 All right, chaps, just in from out-system, eh?
out-system adv. 1967 K. Laumer Spaceman! in Worlds of If June 126/1 We pushed on, hearing rumors, legends, hints that a vessel like the one I described had been seen once, long ago, or had visited the next world out-system, or that creatures like Srat had been found, dead, on an abandoned moon.
parallel universe n. 1968 K. Laumer Assignment in Nowhere 51 From that beginning grew the Imperium—the government claiming sovereignty over the entire Net of alternate worlds. Your world—which is known to us as Blight Insular Three—is but one of the uncountable parallel universes, each differing only infinitesimally from its neighbor.
skinsuit n. 1971 K. Laumer Dinosaur Beach 107 He was dressed in a plain black skin suit with harness and attachments.
Sol n. 1 1991 K. Laumer Judson's Eden 54 Figures: made out of the same gas cloud as Sol and the System.
space-burned adj. 1991 K. Laumer Judson’s Eden 17 As always, the sight of the space-burned tugs and shuttles in their ranked cradles in the ready area gave him a lift of spirits no less than the majestic bulk of the great deep-space hulls across the field, before the bright-lit service hangers.
space law n. 1967 K. Laumer Spaceman! in Worlds of If June 104/2 Better crawl back in your hole, Mister, before you qualify yourself for proceedings under space law.
space navigation n. 1963 K. Laumer Saline Solution in Worlds of If Mar. 37/1 According to the Space Navigation Code, a body in orbit within twenty miles of any inhabited airless body constitutes a navigational hazard. Accordingly, I had it towed away.
terraformed adj. 1991 K. Laumer Judson's Eden 240 AutoSpace has succeeded in establishing viable colonies on more than a dozen habitable or terraformed bodies!
Terrestrial n. 2 1963 K. Laumer Mightiest Qorn in Worlds of If July 69/2 ‘You should have known better than to tackle that fierce-looking creature,’ Zubb said, pointing his beak at Magnan. ‘How does it happen that you speak Terrestrial?’ Retief asked. ‘Oh, one picks up all sorts of dialects.’ ‘It’s quite charming, really,’ Magnan said. ‘Such a quaint, archaic accent.’
time n. 1963 K. Laumer Hoax in Time in Fantastic Aug. 70/1 It hasn’t been broadcasting since we got here because our stay here has all been in time future to the moment at which the computer ceased existing in any real world.
tri-D n. 1966 K. Laumer in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Mar. 147/1 The president was here just now. He came in, looking just like the Tri-D, only older, and he came over and looked at me kind of like I looked at him.
trideo n. 1967 K. Laumer Star Treasure vi. 75 There were meals, served in my room. I was allowed to watch trideo, except that certain channels were blacked out from time to time; news broadcasts, I deduced.
vac-suit n. 1967 K. Laumer Spaceman! in Worlds of If June 100/2 Along the way, I learned the ins and outs of an ion-pulse drive and a stressed-field generator; and I served my time in vac suits, working outside under the big black sky that wrapped all the way around and seemed to pull at me like a magnet that would suck me away into its deepest blackest depths, every hour I spent out on a hull.
wallscreen n. 1962 K. Laumer Retief of the Red-Tape Mountain in Worlds of If May 7/2 He turned to the wall-screen and pressed a button. A system triagram appeared: eight luminous green dots arranged around a larger disk.