review of
Keith Laumer & Gordon R. Dickson's Planet Run
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 8, 2015

My rule for myself is to never have more than a maximum backlog of 3 recently read unreviewed bks. When I started reading this one I had FOUR. I 1st read Laumer's writing w/ Time Trap in June of 2013 (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16155621-time-trap ). I liked it & proceeded to pick up as many bks of his as I cd find thinking I'd continue to enjoy his writing.

8 bks & a mere mnth later, in July of 2013, I'd breezed thru enuf easy reading to make me disgusted so I stopped w/ the Laumer for awhile. 8 mnths later, I was back to Laumer again w/ a review of his The Invaders 2: Enemies from Beyond in February of 2014 (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6250464-enemies-from-beyond ). I started off that review thusly:

"This is about as low as my reading habits get. It's tempting to write a review of this that just makes excuses about WHY I'd read such crap. That wd actually strike me as pretty funny. SO, I'll incorporate that into the review (but it won't be exclusively that)."

So, yeah, it's time to make excuses again. The bks in my personal library are very well organized & there are thousands of them. My collecting is faster than my reading so unread bks accumulate in piles on my floor. To get them off the floor, I've put the unread SF haphazardly & horizontally on top of the vertically placed SF organized on my bk shelves. Every time I see these disorderly bks they're a reminder to me that I shd read them & get them put in their alphabetical & chronological place. I see reading them as a JOB to be gotten over w/.

9 of these unread bks are Laumer's. Reading a Laumer only takes a day or 2 - even when I'm busy otherwise. SO, reading the Laumer's is a way of getting part of my JOB done w/o having to waste too much intellectual energy otherwise. I know, I know: it's a stupid reason for reading a bk considering how much better stuff I have laying around neglected. At least this one was coauthored by Dickson, whose work I haven't previously read, so I can feebly justify reading it by saying that I've read someone new.

That sd, NAH.. it wasn't very good, I've been reading too many coming-of-age SF novels lately (Rite of Passage, The Inverted World, Space Cadet) & I've liked them all more than this one - wch isn't quite a coming-of-age story but has the naive young character going thru the trials of fire under the guidance of the very old experienced warrior-type.

Sd warrior-type, Henry, is the main focus. At 1st he has an old friend:

""How old are you, Amos?" Henry asked abruptly.

""Huh? I'm lesee, a hundred and fifty-two."

""How long since your last Rejuve?"

""Forty-five, forty-six years." He leaned forward, his old eyes bright." - p 18

Amos seems potentially interesting but the authors kill him off right away:

""He's dead, Captain," the thin-faced man said. "The Rejuve treatment—it was too much for him. He died four hours ago. I did all I could . . ."

""You gave Amos a Rejuve? Why, you damned fool!"

""But—he said those were your orders—"" - p 26

That's a tiny spoiler but I don't think it matters much. Henry doesn't want to go to Corazon but Senator Bartholomew tries to blackmail him into it. The plot thickens when Henry manipulates the Senator into sending his son along:

"Henry's eyes were sharp under white brows. "You want me to go to Corazon. Sure, I'll go—but not unless your Statistically Average son goes with me."" - p 22

That's a nice touch & I reckon there are enuf of such nice touches to make it so I'm not completely dismissive of the overall bk. There're others, like: "But Henry scarcely heard him. He was already walking toward the mirage-like scene. A steady flow of warm air pushed into his face, bringing an odor of spring." (p 79) & the quoting a poem by Kipling (highly appropriate).

Nonetheless, I'm thoroughly sick of these stories of tough-guys-w/-principles-endure-torture-&-come-out-triumphant even when I agree with sd principles, blah, blah.. The world is entirely too full of guns & killing & it doesn't make any sense to pretend it's not there but it seems more & more that people just thrive on this shit & can't think enuf outside the box of endless mayhem. ( )