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A Plague of Demons
Investigating the disappearance of soldiers in the midst of battle, John Bravais is transported off-planet by alien beings who are using soldiers from Earth to fight an interstellar war
218 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Keith Laumer
463 books208 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 - 30 of 45 reviews
May 4, 2017
The action never stops. It starts out as a spy novel & winds up spanning the galaxy, so check your suspension of disbelief at the door & just roll with it. Even has Bolos in it, although they're not called that. Fun.
June 1, 2022
A reread. Deranged sci fi pulp. If you told me the author was committed to a mental hospital after reading this, I’d believe you. It tries to be something like James Bond meets Philip K Dick and falls in the middle ground of action-packed fever dream. I don’t even want to give away too much of the plot because part of the fun is the insane direction the story takes. It’s a pulp adventure story about a cool, wisecracking badass fighting aliens with an increasingly elaborate variety of weapons. The world building is unique and the whole thing feels very 70s despite being written in 1965. I’ve read a couple other Laumer books and there’s just something about the off-kilter action that appeals to me. And the grammar; this guy abuses the semicolon and the hyphen to a degree that the action often turns into whole paragraphs of breathless, run-on sentences. I love it. Throw out the rules and make up some popcorn, this is a fun, weird book.
May 16, 2016
Though little discussed today, back in the 1960s, Syracuse, N.Y.-born Keith Laumer was a hugely popular sci-fi author, largely by dint of his series featuring interstellar ambassador/mediator Jaime Retief, a series that began in '63 and ultimately comprised some 18 novels and books of short stories. Somehow, I managed to miss the entire Retief bandwagon back when, and only recently realized that I still had not read a single Laumer book from any of his major series--the Retief series was just one of many--or even any of his stand-alone books. On a whim, I selected his 1965 offering "A Plague of Demons," which was released as the author turned 40; a stand-alone novel that "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia" deems the best of his "taut, extremely efficient sf thrillers," and one that Scottish critic David Pringle has called "perhaps Laumer's most characteristic book." As it happens, I chose well, and the book in question, to my great delight, turns out to be at once exciting, suspenseful, harrowing, well written, amusing and ultimately mind-blowing. In 1966, it was understandably nominated for the first Nebula Award, amongst some extremely stiff competition. No less than 12 novels were nominated for that first Nebula, including Philip K. Dick's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" AND "Dr. Bloodmoney", Clifford D. Simak's "All Flesh Is Grass," Kate Wilhelm's "The Clone," and the deserved winner, Frank Herbert's "Dune." How would you like YOUR novel to be up against competition like that?
Anyway, Laumer's book combines espionage elements with space opera to truly winning effect. "A Plague of Demons" is narrated by John Bravais, an agent who is asked to come to Algeria to meet his old friend Felix Severance, of the CBI (a combination of the CIA and FBI, we can only infer). Bravais learns that for many years, war combatants around the world have been going missing, seemingly vanishing from their fields of battle. Severance asks him to investigate, and it is not long before Bravais witnesses, during a campaign between Moroccan and Algerian troops, just what has been going on: Seven-foot-tall, skull-faced, occasionally bipedal aliens, vaguely canine in appearance, have been surreptitiously killing soldiers on Terran battlefields, slicing out their brains and storing them in vitro for some reason unknown! For the next 2/3 of Laumer's book, the aliens, and their human cat's-paws, chase Bravais from Algeria to Jacksonville, Florida, and then on to Coffeyville, Kansas and to Chicago; a nightmarish pursuit that Bravais survives only because of the PAPA (Power Assisted Personal Armament) modifications that Severance had made on his body, turning him into a superwarrior of sorts. But matters grow even more nightmarish for Bravais in the book's final 1/3, in which he is captured by the aliens, has his own gray matter removed, and awakens on an alien moon in the midst of a battle, his brain being used to power and control a 70-foot-high, massive supertank, in concert with other tanks being propelled by the minds of Earth soldiers from many nations, some from as far back as 1,000 years ago!
"A Plague of Demons" was released at the height of the worldwide fixation with superspies and of 007 mania, and its homages to Ian Fleming's most famous character are many. Not only do James Bond and John Bravais share the same initials, but their best friend and ally is a fellow named Felix (Felix Leiter, in 007's case). Like Bond in '65's "Thunderball," Bravais comes equipped with a flying jet pack, which enables him to spy stealthily over that Algerian battlefield. And ultimately, Severance is revealed to be an operative of a highly secret, self-funded espionage organization, the Ultimax Group (and the fact that Benjamin Franklin is revealed to have been one of the Group's founders, 271 years earlier, is as close as we ever get to figuring out the year in which the novel transpires: 2061 at the latest, since Franklin passed on in 1790). Laumer peppers his story with all sorts of high-tech spy gizmos; besides the PAPA and jet pack, Bravais employs a UV penlight, a finger-ring microphone for listening through doors, and an OE (optical-effect) suit that renders him practically invisible. Futuristic touches also abound, such as (the seemingly unavoidable) telephone screens and sliding pedestrian walkways, the police force's ability to override the controls of any vehicle, cars that can be driven from Florida to Kansas in one night, a subsea tunnel extending from North Africa to Naples, and submarine oil tankers.
Laumer also seems to have learned something from Ian Fleming as regards the use of copious and telling detail to engender believability, and the employment of constant motion to propel a story along; the so-called "Fleming sweep." "A Plague of Demons" does not let up for a moment, and indeed grows wackier and ever more outrageous--winningly so--as it proceeds. The book is what I like to call "densely written"; that is, jam packed with incident and descriptive detail. It is often remarkable how much story is covered over the course of a 10-page chapter! I was often reminded of the early Alfred Bester while reading Laumer's novel, and can well understand now why sci-fi critic John Clute has described Laumer as being an author of "manic panache."
Perhaps I would be remiss if I failed to mention that, besides being an outrageous thrill ride, "A Plague of Demons" is often very funny, too. Indeed, some of Bravais' throwaway comments are genuinely amusing; thus, such lines as "I was as weak as a diplomatic protest" and "The minutes crawled by like stepped-on roaches." I love it! Then again, Laumer is also capable of coming up with a lovely turn of phrase, such as "The moon was up now, an icy blue-white disc glaring in a pale night sky, casting shadows like the memory of a noonday long ago." I should perhaps also add that this novel would make for one truly sensational Hollywood blockbuster, if brought to the screen with care by a team of respectful filmmakers...filmmakers in possession of the requisite $200 million, of course.
The book's alien monstrosities are truly frightening creations, following Bravais around the Earth relentlessly, abetted by their human-seeming accomplices. Paranoia thus abounds, and the novel features any number of thrilling set pieces, including Bravais' battle with one of the aliens on that submarine tanker, the discovery of the underground Ultimax safe house in Kansas, and most especially the final sequence, in which the mind of Bravais takes over a cat brain-controlled octopoid repair mechanism (!) to infiltrate the aliens' central HQ on that war-blasted moon. This last sequence, indeed, is one of the most exciting and imaginative that I have come across in quite some time; wild, wacky, improbable, and yet, gripping in the extreme.
Keith Laumer was not the first author to come up with the idea of a human brain powering a mechanical construct, of course, and indeed, I can fondly recall a Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore story from 1945, entitled "Camouflage," in which a human brain in a box runs an entire starship! But Laumer really does take that central concept and run with it here. It is a plot device that he was evidently quite fond of, resulting in his trilogy of Bolo books starting in 1976, dealing with another kind of sentient supertank. I would love to read them one day. "A Plague of Demons" is the kind of book that makes the reader want to dive into many more works in its author's oeuvre, and thus, I already have "The Best of Keith Laumer" sitting on my bookshelf at home, waiting to be opened. Stay tuned…
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most excellent destination for all fans of Keith Laumer....)
Anyway, Laumer's book combines espionage elements with space opera to truly winning effect. "A Plague of Demons" is narrated by John Bravais, an agent who is asked to come to Algeria to meet his old friend Felix Severance, of the CBI (a combination of the CIA and FBI, we can only infer). Bravais learns that for many years, war combatants around the world have been going missing, seemingly vanishing from their fields of battle. Severance asks him to investigate, and it is not long before Bravais witnesses, during a campaign between Moroccan and Algerian troops, just what has been going on: Seven-foot-tall, skull-faced, occasionally bipedal aliens, vaguely canine in appearance, have been surreptitiously killing soldiers on Terran battlefields, slicing out their brains and storing them in vitro for some reason unknown! For the next 2/3 of Laumer's book, the aliens, and their human cat's-paws, chase Bravais from Algeria to Jacksonville, Florida, and then on to Coffeyville, Kansas and to Chicago; a nightmarish pursuit that Bravais survives only because of the PAPA (Power Assisted Personal Armament) modifications that Severance had made on his body, turning him into a superwarrior of sorts. But matters grow even more nightmarish for Bravais in the book's final 1/3, in which he is captured by the aliens, has his own gray matter removed, and awakens on an alien moon in the midst of a battle, his brain being used to power and control a 70-foot-high, massive supertank, in concert with other tanks being propelled by the minds of Earth soldiers from many nations, some from as far back as 1,000 years ago!
"A Plague of Demons" was released at the height of the worldwide fixation with superspies and of 007 mania, and its homages to Ian Fleming's most famous character are many. Not only do James Bond and John Bravais share the same initials, but their best friend and ally is a fellow named Felix (Felix Leiter, in 007's case). Like Bond in '65's "Thunderball," Bravais comes equipped with a flying jet pack, which enables him to spy stealthily over that Algerian battlefield. And ultimately, Severance is revealed to be an operative of a highly secret, self-funded espionage organization, the Ultimax Group (and the fact that Benjamin Franklin is revealed to have been one of the Group's founders, 271 years earlier, is as close as we ever get to figuring out the year in which the novel transpires: 2061 at the latest, since Franklin passed on in 1790). Laumer peppers his story with all sorts of high-tech spy gizmos; besides the PAPA and jet pack, Bravais employs a UV penlight, a finger-ring microphone for listening through doors, and an OE (optical-effect) suit that renders him practically invisible. Futuristic touches also abound, such as (the seemingly unavoidable) telephone screens and sliding pedestrian walkways, the police force's ability to override the controls of any vehicle, cars that can be driven from Florida to Kansas in one night, a subsea tunnel extending from North Africa to Naples, and submarine oil tankers.
Laumer also seems to have learned something from Ian Fleming as regards the use of copious and telling detail to engender believability, and the employment of constant motion to propel a story along; the so-called "Fleming sweep." "A Plague of Demons" does not let up for a moment, and indeed grows wackier and ever more outrageous--winningly so--as it proceeds. The book is what I like to call "densely written"; that is, jam packed with incident and descriptive detail. It is often remarkable how much story is covered over the course of a 10-page chapter! I was often reminded of the early Alfred Bester while reading Laumer's novel, and can well understand now why sci-fi critic John Clute has described Laumer as being an author of "manic panache."
Perhaps I would be remiss if I failed to mention that, besides being an outrageous thrill ride, "A Plague of Demons" is often very funny, too. Indeed, some of Bravais' throwaway comments are genuinely amusing; thus, such lines as "I was as weak as a diplomatic protest" and "The minutes crawled by like stepped-on roaches." I love it! Then again, Laumer is also capable of coming up with a lovely turn of phrase, such as "The moon was up now, an icy blue-white disc glaring in a pale night sky, casting shadows like the memory of a noonday long ago." I should perhaps also add that this novel would make for one truly sensational Hollywood blockbuster, if brought to the screen with care by a team of respectful filmmakers...filmmakers in possession of the requisite $200 million, of course.
The book's alien monstrosities are truly frightening creations, following Bravais around the Earth relentlessly, abetted by their human-seeming accomplices. Paranoia thus abounds, and the novel features any number of thrilling set pieces, including Bravais' battle with one of the aliens on that submarine tanker, the discovery of the underground Ultimax safe house in Kansas, and most especially the final sequence, in which the mind of Bravais takes over a cat brain-controlled octopoid repair mechanism (!) to infiltrate the aliens' central HQ on that war-blasted moon. This last sequence, indeed, is one of the most exciting and imaginative that I have come across in quite some time; wild, wacky, improbable, and yet, gripping in the extreme.
Keith Laumer was not the first author to come up with the idea of a human brain powering a mechanical construct, of course, and indeed, I can fondly recall a Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore story from 1945, entitled "Camouflage," in which a human brain in a box runs an entire starship! But Laumer really does take that central concept and run with it here. It is a plot device that he was evidently quite fond of, resulting in his trilogy of Bolo books starting in 1976, dealing with another kind of sentient supertank. I would love to read them one day. "A Plague of Demons" is the kind of book that makes the reader want to dive into many more works in its author's oeuvre, and thus, I already have "The Best of Keith Laumer" sitting on my bookshelf at home, waiting to be opened. Stay tuned…
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most excellent destination for all fans of Keith Laumer....)
February 1, 2010
3.5 stars. Better than a 3 star effort but not quite good enough to warrant 4 stars. A fun, quick read with plenty of action from start to finish. Not big on substance but I can definitely say the book is never boring.
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1966)
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1966)
December 18, 2022
This is exactly the kind of book that makes me embarrassed to love science fiction. When I tell people I read science fiction, this is exactly the kind of book I imagine they imagine I read and love. It's mortifying. Writers like Laumer are one of the reasons people tend not to take the genre seriously at all. Writers like Laumer are one of the reasons I CARRY WITH ME SO MUCH SHAME. Thanks, asshole.
March 17, 2017
Does anyone else have those moments of "only-ness" where you're, say, listening to an old CD in the car and suddenly realize you're probably the only person in the whole world listening to "Wake Up Stop Dreaming" from Wang Chung's "To Live and Die in L.A." soundtrack right now? That's how I feel reading some of these old sci-fi paperbacks - and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet who spent this past week reading Keith Laumer's Plague of Demons. So yeah - probably some SPOILERS here, but seriously, who among my friends is really planning to read this anyway?
I hit gold last year reading Laumer's Dinosaur Beach (which I really have to reread sometime, to see if I still stand by my 5-star review), and so picked up a few more Laumer's at McKay Used Books in Manassa, VA, which ranged from 65-90¢. First up to read was Demons, written five years before Beach, and I found it interesting to see the (perhaps anecdotal) improvement in Laumer's style and plotting between the two books. Like Beach, Demons is wildly ambitious and ramps up the "wow" factor in the third act. But Demons pushes it way farther - and with less success - than Beach.
The story? Basically, Demons' hero starts off pretty much as Sam Spade, and ends up pretty much as an oversized Dalek. Seriously - the guy's a futuristic spy/detective who spouts classic noir hokum like "I rode up (the elevator), then walked past a few miles of wallpaper that was someone's revenge for a life of disappointments;" and "I had another attack of nausea that...easily left me strong enough to sort out someone's stamp collection." By then, he's already had a thorough Steve Austin upgrade and jet-packed out of Morocco, only to be chased across Kansas by a pack of brain-harvesting, alien demon-dogs, who eventually catch him and...kill him!
He then wakes up mid-battle as a 70-foot tall fighting machine on the moon of some distant planet, centuries into an inter-galactic war for which humanity has long been providing the (literal) brainpower. He then brain-skips into a robot-cat-thing, defeats the angry octopus and dives into the shiny bowl, thereby releasing the brains of all the other human Daleks, who then defeat the legit alien machines. And while some of the human brains decide to return to Earth and get new bodies, our hero decides to stay a battle tank and carry his fight...to the stars! Or maybe Gallifrey; the book just ends there, and there apparently was never a sequel, (although Laumer did write a whole separate series about his "Bolo" self-aware, super-heavy tanks - but I think he's just self-plagiarizing here, rather than linking Demons to his Bolo universe).
So like I said - ambitious, trippy, grossly inconsistent but an interesting prelude of what was to come in Dinosaur Beach (and maybe some more yet-to-be-discovered classics?). But certainly enough to keep Laumer somewhere on my "WTF?" to-read list for the foreseeable future.
I hit gold last year reading Laumer's Dinosaur Beach (which I really have to reread sometime, to see if I still stand by my 5-star review), and so picked up a few more Laumer's at McKay Used Books in Manassa, VA, which ranged from 65-90¢. First up to read was Demons, written five years before Beach, and I found it interesting to see the (perhaps anecdotal) improvement in Laumer's style and plotting between the two books. Like Beach, Demons is wildly ambitious and ramps up the "wow" factor in the third act. But Demons pushes it way farther - and with less success - than Beach.
The story? Basically, Demons' hero starts off pretty much as Sam Spade, and ends up pretty much as an oversized Dalek. Seriously - the guy's a futuristic spy/detective who spouts classic noir hokum like "I rode up (the elevator), then walked past a few miles of wallpaper that was someone's revenge for a life of disappointments;" and "I had another attack of nausea that...easily left me strong enough to sort out someone's stamp collection." By then, he's already had a thorough Steve Austin upgrade and jet-packed out of Morocco, only to be chased across Kansas by a pack of brain-harvesting, alien demon-dogs, who eventually catch him and...kill him!
He then wakes up mid-battle as a 70-foot tall fighting machine on the moon of some distant planet, centuries into an inter-galactic war for which humanity has long been providing the (literal) brainpower. He then brain-skips into a robot-cat-thing, defeats the angry octopus and dives into the shiny bowl, thereby releasing the brains of all the other human Daleks, who then defeat the legit alien machines. And while some of the human brains decide to return to Earth and get new bodies, our hero decides to stay a battle tank and carry his fight...to the stars! Or maybe Gallifrey; the book just ends there, and there apparently was never a sequel, (although Laumer did write a whole separate series about his "Bolo" self-aware, super-heavy tanks - but I think he's just self-plagiarizing here, rather than linking Demons to his Bolo universe).
So like I said - ambitious, trippy, grossly inconsistent but an interesting prelude of what was to come in Dinosaur Beach (and maybe some more yet-to-be-discovered classics?). But certainly enough to keep Laumer somewhere on my "WTF?" to-read list for the foreseeable future.
December 7, 2012
This book was great, classic Laumer. The premise is your typical alien-invaders plot, but he takes it in some really cool directions. For the last third of the book he twists everything upside-down, almost like a completely different story. Great stuff, and maybe you'd see it coming but it totally caught me off guard. Very well executed.
If you haven't read any of my prior Laumer reviews, let me just say that he's all about action and moving the story along. This is not to say that his stories are simple; they're almost always complex and riddled with subversion to make them almost Bond-meets-SciFi (but very gritty).
As always, this book was far too short at only 250 pages, but I loved it. My 2nd favorite of his novels so far.
If you haven't read any of my prior Laumer reviews, let me just say that he's all about action and moving the story along. This is not to say that his stories are simple; they're almost always complex and riddled with subversion to make them almost Bond-meets-SciFi (but very gritty).
As always, this book was far too short at only 250 pages, but I loved it. My 2nd favorite of his novels so far.
November 7, 2010
I received a number of hand-me-down, old, science-fiction books from a relative, and Plague of Demons was one of them. Although the story is copyright 1965, it has held up remarkably well over the decades. As the story moved into it's second "phase" it became harder to relate to it, but the lead character provided a continuity and perspective that kept it interesting.
February 20, 2023
The demons in this tale steal the brains of brave warriors. No mention of Al-Qaeda or ISIS members so I can't help but think this book has a political bias. 6/10.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 15, 2018
The cover art was worth the 25 cents I paid for it. I did also read the innards, but I kinda wished I hadn't.
August 20, 2013
I first read this book about 45 years ago, one of the first science fiction books I ever read, after Slan and Childhood's End, and it stuck with me. It has a haunting atmosphere, kind of a sticky miasma of horror that clings even after finishing the book. Some years ago, I searched it out and re-read it and it still had that impact. A good, fast read. Perhaps not a masterpiece but definitely a good read.
July 16, 2015
I do not know why I bought this book, way back in 1981 or 82. Maybe it was the cover. I remember enjoying it at that time, but cannot remember much of the story now, expect for the fact that it was a sort of one-man war against shape-shifting aliens. And there was a cute little handheld computer which helped the protagonist throughout.
January 24, 2016
Not bad for an older scifi book, fun read
January 31, 2013
Pleasing in its insanity.
April 12, 2012
I even read it twice!
August 15, 2023
Starts off as a near future spy novel, before speeding into alien invasion, cyborgisation, sailing on submarine tankers, secret organisations hundreds of years old, brain transference into gigantic mechanical war engines -Bolos in all but name (and they do get a brief reference)- on an extra-galactic moon, and finally almost ending in an almost literal cat-and-dog battle.
A Plague of Demons is full of unlikely coincidence, unlikely reactions to outrageous circumstances... but doesn't care. It's here to tell an exciting, bonkers tale, in which, ultimately, the evil aliens will rue the day they rattled humanity's cage.
Damned fun.
A Plague of Demons is full of unlikely coincidence, unlikely reactions to outrageous circumstances... but doesn't care. It's here to tell an exciting, bonkers tale, in which, ultimately, the evil aliens will rue the day they rattled humanity's cage.
Damned fun.
November 16, 2018
A short novel by someone I have never heard of, at least it will be over quickly. How wrong I was, this book has the most insane pace and whilst it is a little silly you don't dwell long enough for that to take root. The protagonist is never on the front foot from chapter one and this sense of being off balance resonates throughout. The midway twist despite being more than a little crazy does fit in with the premise leading up to the thrilling climax. A perfect book for its length, a thriller which uses science fiction well but avoids getting bogged down in detail.
October 3, 2019
I REALLY wanted to like this book, because the “demons” described and illustrated on the cover of this book are honestly really fun brain-stealing antagonists.
This book had zero tension because of constant over-the-top action and plot devices. The smarmy “action hero” protagonist deals with some interesting problems with his body, but for the most part when reading this you go into each situation knowing he’ll come out on top. (even in ridiculous situations).
I wanted to give this novel two stars for its genuinely fun creativity (especially near the end of the book), but sadly it became a difficult read. The last few pages and writing style of characters “from other places” was downright embarrassing. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but I suppose this book wasn’t meant for me.
This book had zero tension because of constant over-the-top action and plot devices. The smarmy “action hero” protagonist deals with some interesting problems with his body, but for the most part when reading this you go into each situation knowing he’ll come out on top. (even in ridiculous situations).
I wanted to give this novel two stars for its genuinely fun creativity (especially near the end of the book), but sadly it became a difficult read. The last few pages and writing style of characters “from other places” was downright embarrassing. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but I suppose this book wasn’t meant for me.
November 22, 2017
Read about half of this before giving up. Was hoping for some fun, action-packed, retro sci-fi like WASP, but this fell far short. The writing seemed sloppy, the dialogue was terrible and over-stuffed with metaphors. It was supposed to be in the future, but I only remembered that once in a while when he mentioned something tech related.
December 16, 2023
Maybe I’m just spoiled from living in an age where there are no limitations to what can be creatively done on the big screen and if this was written 20 years later it probably would have been a screenplay. A lot of action. A lot. Unfortunately not a lot of introspection, emotion or other literary elements that make this piece of art make sense as a book.
February 9, 2019
A Plague of Demons is a strange book. I didn't find the technology dated, but I did find the style it was written in dated. At 159 pages it is short, even with small print, but a lot happens in those pages which means there is not a great deal of depth, which might have made me like it more.
August 12, 2022
That was quite enjoyable, and also enlightening, as it's from a mind far older than our current time, yet so inspired.
A good, short read from a very interesting pen. I can't believe it's been on my shelf this long without being picked up!
A good, short read from a very interesting pen. I can't believe it's been on my shelf this long without being picked up!
October 28, 2018
There was some prose in the first few segments that I really liked, but the plot is just absolutely nonsensical. I've gotten some great stuff from flea markets/thrift stores, but this one burned me.
September 25, 2019
Exciting, action packed, and full of fun surprises.
February 25, 2020
6/10.
Strange book about a man who is faced with dealing with aliens who are harvesting humans. A fairly standard read.
September 15, 2020
I have a vague feeling I’ve read this book before, light years away, in another time and another body...
November 14, 2022
This is the blueprint of what I want from an action novel. Descriptive of character and location, yet concise. Action is fast, and the story is always moving. Some humour, yet it takes itself seriously, but not to the point of being dour. And for the final flourish, it goes completely off the rails.
I've never actually seen a James Bond movie (or any of the books), but I imagine this captures at least some of the appeal. A cool and collected super-spy, John Bravais, uses the latest technology to secretly investigate the shady goings-on of the international world. Except because this is science fiction, he uncovers hostile aliens extracting humans brain for...something. The story moves a mile a minute, and though it's short it's also dense. Part of that density is Laumer's description. He spends only a paragraph or two on any given location or character, but they're all I need to picture things perfectly. He also has a library of bizarre similes he busts out whenever some levity is needed. Comparisons included looking like a corpse done over by a bargain-bin mortician (as opposed to a corpse left in a ditch), and feeling like a piece of torn sheet metal - full of sharp edges, but easy to punch a hole through. On this basis alone I wouldn't be opposed to trying out more of his books.
The other reason is the out of nowhere left turn the book takes about 2/3s through. Most of the story is spent fleeing and fist-fighting the dog-like alien "Demons", until even John's cyborg enhancements can't save him.
There is a brief mention of a Bolo II tank in the first part of the story, and the massive brain-tanks of the other are highly reminiscent of the massive intelligent tanks of Laumer's Bolo series. The wikipedia article on his Retief series claims that that series also has references to his Bolo series, but may not actually be set in it, so this might be a similar case.
The story was originally published a year earlier as a two part serial "The Hounds of Hell" in Worlds of IF. From a skim the two seemed almost identical, the main difference being that the exposition of the Over-mind was significantly shorter, making no reference to Good and Evil, and the final section takes palce on the moon rather than far from Earth. There is also a final page that was cut in the novel version.
The inclusion of this page alters the final emotion from triumph to melancholy. It's amazing what such a small excision can do to a story.
Finally Barlowe's Guide.
This is one of the illustrations I appreciate more than when I was a kid. It's an efficient combination of dog, horse, and human in a disturbing package. It's completely faithful to the descriptions, including no trace of claws on the human-like hands, and the near-emaciation of the limbs and body. Not a favourite, but a faithful recreation of the main alien of the novel.
I do have a soft spot for this illustration from the original magazine.
I've never actually seen a James Bond movie (or any of the books), but I imagine this captures at least some of the appeal. A cool and collected super-spy, John Bravais, uses the latest technology to secretly investigate the shady goings-on of the international world. Except because this is science fiction, he uncovers hostile aliens extracting humans brain for...something. The story moves a mile a minute, and though it's short it's also dense. Part of that density is Laumer's description. He spends only a paragraph or two on any given location or character, but they're all I need to picture things perfectly. He also has a library of bizarre similes he busts out whenever some levity is needed. Comparisons included looking like a corpse done over by a bargain-bin mortician (as opposed to a corpse left in a ditch), and feeling like a piece of torn sheet metal - full of sharp edges, but easy to punch a hole through. On this basis alone I wouldn't be opposed to trying out more of his books.
The other reason is the out of nowhere left turn the book takes about 2/3s through. Most of the story is spent fleeing and fist-fighting the dog-like alien "Demons", until even John's cyborg enhancements can't save him.
There is a brief mention of a Bolo II tank in the first part of the story, and the massive brain-tanks of the other are highly reminiscent of the massive intelligent tanks of Laumer's Bolo series. The wikipedia article on his Retief series claims that that series also has references to his Bolo series, but may not actually be set in it, so this might be a similar case.
The story was originally published a year earlier as a two part serial "The Hounds of Hell" in Worlds of IF. From a skim the two seemed almost identical, the main difference being that the exposition of the Over-mind was significantly shorter, making no reference to Good and Evil, and the final section takes palce on the moon rather than far from Earth. There is also a final page that was cut in the novel version.
The inclusion of this page alters the final emotion from triumph to melancholy. It's amazing what such a small excision can do to a story.
Finally Barlowe's Guide.
This is one of the illustrations I appreciate more than when I was a kid. It's an efficient combination of dog, horse, and human in a disturbing package. It's completely faithful to the descriptions, including no trace of claws on the human-like hands, and the near-emaciation of the limbs and body. Not a favourite, but a faithful recreation of the main alien of the novel.
I do have a soft spot for this illustration from the original magazine.
April 7, 2021
Fast paced and interesting. It takes unexpected turns and by the end you'll be wondering how the protagonist could possibly win.
January 24, 2008
Keith Laumer, A Plague of Demons (Paperback Library, 1965)
Keith Laumer may be a science fiction writer, but don't let that fool you. I'd bet a week's pay the guy was sitting there at his typewriter in a trenchcoat and fedora, unfiltered Lucky hanging from his lip, reading back his prose in a Bogart voice. The first two-thirds of this book is straight out of the world of hardboiled detective fiction. Well, okay, as long as you leave out the dog-faced aliens, invisibility suits, anti-gravity devices, you get the idea.
The scene is present-day Algeria, where your basic world war has come down to a seemingly endless conflict between Algeria and Tunisia, with the rest of the world powers backing one side or the other. Jack Bravais, an American general, is sent to observe the fighting and report back to his superiors, or so we think. His best friend, an operative for a secret government espionage agency, has different orders for him and a cover that's bound to stir up trouble-- make Bravais look like he's plotting against the UN, and a fellow American general in particular. As if that isn't enough for Bravais to get himself into, he very quickly finds out that his real mission (find out why the estimated casualty numbers for battles dating all the way back to WWI don't match the actual body counts) involves proving the existence of aliens. Well, alrighty then.
The book's got a slow beginning, but it takes off around chapter three, and never looks back. The tone changes, inexplicably, about two-thirds of the way through and the book becomes much more a hard SF novel (one can almost hear the publisher screaming "there aren't enough damn robots in here!" at the first draft), but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment to be found in Bravais and his dimwit sidekick Joel (no last name). If you're a sci-fi fan looking for a good mystery, or a mystery fan looking for some aliens to play with, this is right up your alley. Have fun. ***
Keith Laumer may be a science fiction writer, but don't let that fool you. I'd bet a week's pay the guy was sitting there at his typewriter in a trenchcoat and fedora, unfiltered Lucky hanging from his lip, reading back his prose in a Bogart voice. The first two-thirds of this book is straight out of the world of hardboiled detective fiction. Well, okay, as long as you leave out the dog-faced aliens, invisibility suits, anti-gravity devices, you get the idea.
The scene is present-day Algeria, where your basic world war has come down to a seemingly endless conflict between Algeria and Tunisia, with the rest of the world powers backing one side or the other. Jack Bravais, an American general, is sent to observe the fighting and report back to his superiors, or so we think. His best friend, an operative for a secret government espionage agency, has different orders for him and a cover that's bound to stir up trouble-- make Bravais look like he's plotting against the UN, and a fellow American general in particular. As if that isn't enough for Bravais to get himself into, he very quickly finds out that his real mission (find out why the estimated casualty numbers for battles dating all the way back to WWI don't match the actual body counts) involves proving the existence of aliens. Well, alrighty then.
The book's got a slow beginning, but it takes off around chapter three, and never looks back. The tone changes, inexplicably, about two-thirds of the way through and the book becomes much more a hard SF novel (one can almost hear the publisher screaming "there aren't enough damn robots in here!" at the first draft), but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment to be found in Bravais and his dimwit sidekick Joel (no last name). If you're a sci-fi fan looking for a good mystery, or a mystery fan looking for some aliens to play with, this is right up your alley. Have fun. ***
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