Introduction to
TEST TO DESTRUCTION:

I have done so many riffs on who and what Keith Laumer is (not the least of which is a verbose and sententious introduction to his Double-day collection, Nine by Laumer) that, frankly, I don't know what to say that I haven't already said. But . . .

Laumer is a tall, rugged, rather good-looking man, if you admire that kind of cruel mouth and beady little eyes like a marmoset. He has written several volumes of stories about a professional diplomat in the galactic future, a fellow named Retief. It is no mere coincidence that Laumer has been a diplomat, in the U. S. Foreign Service. But the Retief stories are lighthearted, and many readers have failed to take notice (as I pointed out at dreary length in my introduction to his collection) of Laumer's serious work. His many allegories of the world in which we live—stories that take a hard, sometimes distressed look at what we do to each other. His dynachrome stories with their inherent warnings about the age of the computers. His chase-adventures through the Structured Society where the man alone is doomed from the start, yet makes his play because he is a man. These stories are the real Laumer, and it is a shame he can sell the Retief stuff so easily, because it allows him to coast, allows him to tell extended jokes when he should be grappling with more complex themes, such as the one he offers in the story you are about to read.

Laumer is a singular man. He is a mass of contradictions, a driven talent, a pillar of strength, a man who values and understands ethics and morality on almost a cellular level. It shows up in his work. He is a writer who refuses to ignore reality, even when writing interstellar fantasies. There are basics in the Universe that are immutable to Laumer. I cannot find it in my heart to disagree with him. Love and courage and determination are good; war and laziness and hypocrisy are bad. If I could name a man I have met who seemed to me incorruptible, it would have to be Laumer. (I am cautious about making these value judgments, however. Too often I've raised mere mortals to the pedestal, only to find out they are as strong-and-weak as all other mere mortals, including myself. Laumer may well be an exception.)

Keith's biographical notes are rather interesting. I include them here just as they were submitted, for I think they reflect the truth of what I've just said about him.

"I was born in New York State, lived there until age twelve, then to Florida. Thus, I can see the Civil War from both sides. Perhaps this is at the bottom of my inability to become a true believer in any of the popular causes. (I find that humans can be divided only into two meaningful categories: Decent Humans and Sonsofbitches; both types appear to be evenly distributed among all shapes, colors, sizes and nationalities.)

"In 1943, at age eighteen, I went into the army. Saw Texas, Georgia, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and other strange places. They all seemed to be populated by the same kind of grubby, greedy, lovable/hatable people I had known back home. In 1946, I found myself on the University of Illinois campus, studying architecture. Five years later I had a wife, two tots, and two degrees. Meantime, I had put the final conclusions to my theories about people by having met bastards both black and white, Good Christians and Good Jews. None of them seemed to have a corner on virtue or villainy.

"In 1953, I fooled the authorities by going into the air force as a first lieutenant before they could draft me for WWIII, then imminent. They fooled me instead, by finking out on the war. I spent a year in solitary on a rock in Labrador. In '56, I left the air force to enter the foreign service. Discovered a teeny-weeny preponderance of Sonsofbitches there. I did two years in Burma standing on my ear, and discovered (surprise!) I was a writer. I went back into the air force in 1960, did a tour in London, quit my job in 1965 to become a full-time writer, and I never intend to change jobs again."

He neglects to mention such books as Embassy, Catastrophe Planet, Envoy to New Worlds, Worlds of the Imperium, Retief's War and Earth-blood (written with Rosel G. Brown). He also neglects to mention he is one of the very few major new talents to emerge in the field of speculative fiction in the past five years. But we can attribute that to Keith's incredible modesty.

Earlier I commented on the serious nature of the best of Laumer's work. What follows, the story "Test to Destruction," is indicative of this seriousness. But Laumer is no mere Edgar Guest of science fiction—a mouther of platitudes—life is real, life is earnest—for he offers us a dangerous vision about the basic nature of man. And it is a comment on his drive to become the compleat storyteller that this tale of morality is couched in the time-honored form of the chase-action-adventure.