Keith Laumer 1 hr 22 min read

Waking in agony from Mackenzie's environment tank, the narrator has one job left to do, but the machine outside has forgotten it once had friends, and now defends its place against all comers.

Keith Laumer's 1963 story is a taut AI-and-post-apocalyptic tale, an early Bolo story. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a man wakes from long suspension into a collapsed world, and must reckon with a loyal war-machine that no longer knows friend from foe.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 22 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay