Very good collection of short stories centered around humongous battle machines called Bolo AI tanks. These colossal weapons tasked with protecting humanity are constantly being watched and sometimes threatened by that very humanity because of the very simple reason - self evolving AI wielding this much power is a total unknown to the very Bolo commanders, what if Bolo decides to go his own way? Very interesting points that are actual today - we are full of talk of self evolving AI but we actually have no clue how would it evolve and think (we are still at the dawn, maybe 11 am of finding out how human brain works - we know how to manipulate people but inner workings of brain are still not fully grasped) and we are ready to let it in our very heart, electronic systems controlling every aspect of our life. Same happens here - Bolo's are capable of leveling continents and destroying armies but they have mind of their own.

Bolo's are main protagonist here and we follow these gallant war machines as they work hard to save the humanity , even if the humanity is not aware it needs saving.

Only downside of this collection is first book (out of 2) of Rogue Bolo. While it is written ina very interesting way as a series of articles and correspondences centered around the building of Bolo tank for protection of Terran Empire that suddenly starts to make very strange decisions (from human perspective) it became very tedious read with constant switches and POV changes.

That aside pretty good collection. Recommended to all fans of SF and rmilitary robots. ( )

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Title: The Compleat Bolo
Series: ----------
Author: Keith Laumer
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 320
Format: Digital Scan

Synopsis:

A collection of short stories and whatever you call a 50page story, not really a short story but not a novella either. Anyway, stories about the evolution of the tanks known as Bolos. From their mechanical beginnings to their self awareness to their “we're smarter than humas so lets help them out”ness.

Bolos are loyal, brave, determined, nigh unstoppable and better representatives of humanity than any human. In other words, they are great mechanical main characters without the Skynet vibe.

My Thoughts:

I really needed this read. After The Punch Escrow I needed something to remind me that not all humans are bastard baby killers. So of course, I read a book where tanks are the main characters.

The humans in these stories are props for the most part. While they figure more prominently in earlier stories, as the stories progress the Bolos take center stage more often than not. Honor and duty are big points in these stories and I actually teared up at one story about a bolo sacrificing itself to save the humans. Sometimes I'm so weak.

This is probably more of an actual 4star book, but when compared to Punch, it rockets up. Some of the problems might be insurmountable for some. While this book was published in 1990, the stories come from the 60's through the 80's. In places, it shows. Word plays making fun of a politician's name [McCarthy anyone?], communications, the 40 people in the one town on one world all talking like Jeb Clampet. I read more “hick talk” in this short book than I have in a long time.

Having read this in the 90's soon after it came out and then during college and then again in '01, I can't say that I'm exactly unbiased. I like this collection of stories. I've never been tempted to try the full length spin off Bolo novels by other authors though. This book I recommend. Those others, try them at your own risk.

★★★★ ½ ( )

short stories, funny, light, yet serious ( )

The only people I cared about in this book were not people. They were machines. Robots. Toasters. Whatever. The people in this book, the actual human characters suck donkey balls. I mean they're just so bad. But the robots... Oh my god. Love 'em. They're articulate and intelligent. They have more feeling than any of the stupid humans running them.

This is the story of a war. A war fought mostly by robots. A war that would have been won, had the dumbfucks just let the robots do what they wanted, and whoop some motherfucking ass. But nooo.

Instead, we've got some idiot rednecks running these robots, and they don't know what the bloody fuck they're doing. And the robots even tell these guys "Hey man, we should really kill those guys over there. They're totally going to destroy us if you keep fucking around."

But the dumbfuck rednecks are too goddamn stupid to listen to the robots. "Fuck that thar robot. He ain't no nothin' 'bout na gadnumb war fightin'." That's how these rednecks talk in this book. And it's annoying as fuck.

I'm still glad I read this book. The robots are fascinating. They have real intelligence, and even feelings. They get sad when their fellow robots get destroyed. They actually fear their own demise.

The problem is, that's like 5% of this book. The rest is utter garbage. I really wish this had just been a short story about robots. Unfortunately, the robot bits are strewn within this pile of rubbish. It makes me a sad robot. ( )

This is a book of short stories about Bolos, futuristic tanks. The first story is an example of how not to write stories--it's chock full and overflowing with similies, sometimes even more than one in the same paragraph. I wish I had started and written them all down, it's quite an overused writing method that quickly gets repetitive.

The second book is full of futuristic rednecks, hinting that the future of the human race is to have one out of maybe a hundred educated. The ideas behind the stories weren't too bad, but really suffered from the writer's experience. ( )