End as a Hero: A Positronic Book

By Keith Laumer

Book Overview

A soldier caught in the machinery of future war faces the brutal question of what courage is worth when survival itself may no longer be enough. In End as a Hero, Keith Laumer delivers the kind of compact, forceful science fiction that made his work a staple of the magazine era: fast-moving, sharp-edged, militarized, and driven by pressure on men forced to act when institutions, enemies, and technology all close in.

Laumer's science fiction often combines action with distrust of bureaucracy, command structures, political absurdity, and the dehumanizing effects of systems built for power rather than truth. Here, the language of heroism is tested against the realities of conflict, sacrifice, and manipulation. The result is a lean classic SF story about war, duty, identity, and the cost of being useful to forces larger than oneself.

For readers of vintage science fiction, military SF, Cold War-era speculative fiction, space adventure, and action-driven magazine stories, End as a Hero offers a strong example of Laumer's direct style and combative imagination. It fits naturally within the Positronic line as a short, punchy work of classic science fiction built around danger, discipline, and the uneasy distance between official glory and human cost.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1515404994
• ISBN13: 9781515404996
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Positronic Publishing
• Length: 44 Pages
• Weight: 0.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Free SF Reader

A lone man in space is stuck in a very sticky situation: " . . . you Psychodynamics people have been telling me the Gool may have some kind of long-range telehypnotic ability that might make it possible for them to subvert a loyal man without his knowledge. You've told me yourself that you blacked out during the attackand came to on the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there. "This is war, Granthan. War against a vicious enemy who strike without warning and without mercy. You were sent out to investigate the possibility ofwhat's that term you use?hypercortical invasion. You know better than most the risk I'd be running if you were allowed to pass the patrol line." However, his encounters and skills have given him power and insight into new technology, so he desperately tries to stay alive to get back home and do it. The question is, who are the aliens controlling and influencing really, if he can manage to do this? A nifty little short novel of the slightly paranoid not sure what is going on action variety. 3.5 out of 5