Jame Retief

Detailing the travails of Jame Retief in the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne (CDT), the stories have a base in Laumer's experiences in the United States Foreign Service, notably his time as vice consul in Burma in the 1950s.

In the various stories, Retief can be found swimming, skiing, mountain climbing, scuba diving, combat driving, and piloting various types of air- and spacecraft.

Many years later, Jack Gaughan pointed out to me that an actual historical character named Retief had lived in South Africa and had been massacred by the Zulus and been mentioned in an H. Rider Haggard novel, Marie.

He is master of derring-do, a cunning, fast-thinking, smooth-talking, tough brawler, solving problems through the rapid application of clever dealing, judicious violence, and complete disregard for the directives of the Corps and his immediate superiors.

Targets of bureaucratic and geo-political excess skewered by Laumer include hair-splitting diplomatic protocol (often represented by required dress — the early late evening hemidemisemi-formalwear, for example), meaningless awards (the fig leaf with clusters), the Cold War (the alien race known as the Groaci are direct analogues to the USSR in many stories), and a panoply of excruciatingly nuanced facial expressions, catalogued by number in the official CDT handbook, and exemplified in the following quote: "A most perceptive observation, Chester", Earlyworm said, bestowing a 24-w (Gracious Condescension) leavened with a hint of 7-y (Expectation of Great Things in Due Course) on the lucky bureaucrat, at which his fellow underlings around the table were quick to bombard him with approbation, ranging from Faintlady's 12.7-x (Knew You Had It In You, Fella) to Felix's more restrained 119-a (We're All Pulling For You, Lad), to which he responded with a shy 3-v (Modest Awareness of Virtue).

"In fact", Earlyworm interjected a Cold Return to Objectivity (91-s) into the lightning interplay of ritual grimacing ...Reviewing Galactic Diplomat, an early Retief collection, Algis Budrys reported that he "enjoyed the daylights out of this book, without for an instant being able to distinguish between one story and the next".

[2] Theodore Sturgeon rather caustically dismissed the series in 1971, saying: "I find nothing admirable or amusing about lies and double-dealing ... What slams the ultimate lid on the whole scam is Laumer/Retief's light-hearted callousness toward one species or another of funny little green niggers".

[3] Retief is featured in the Aldebaran III "world" (story) written by Peter Langston for Wander his text adventure game engine.