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Keith Laumer (June 9, 1925 – January 23, 1993) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full time writer, he was an officer in the US Air Force and a US diplomat.

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Keith Laumer is best known for his Bolo stories and his satirical Retief series. The former chronicled the evolution of self-aware juggernaut-sized tanks with increasingly overwhelming firepower through the centuries. The latter dealt with the adventures of a two-fisted spacefaring diplomat who constantly has to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder. The Retief stories were greatly influenced by Laumer's earlier career in the United States Foreign Service.

Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one of them, "In the Queue", received nominations for both) and his novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.

During the peak years of 1959-1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer whose work was always at least competent. His novels tended to follow one of two patterns:

straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence. After the stroke, he was unable to write for a few years. As he explained in an interview with Charles Platt published in (1987), he refused to accept the doctors' diagnosis. He came up with an alternative explanation and developed an alternative (and very painful) treatment program. Although he was unable to write in the early 1970s, he had a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke published during that time.

In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing, however the quality of his work dropped precipitously. Laumer also re-edited many of his earlier works when they were reprinted in the 1980s, often to their detriment.

Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the US magazines Air Trails, Model Airplane News and Flying Models, as well as the British Aero Modeler. He published one book on the subject, in 1960. His later designs were mostly gas-powered free flight planes, and had a whimsical charm with names to match, like the "Twin Lizzie" and the "Lulla-Bi". His designs are still being revisited, reinvented and built today.

Books set in the Imperium mythos: a continuum of parallel worlds policed by the Imperium, a government based in an alternate Stockholm.

A comic equivalent of the Imperium mythos, in which the hero has the ability to travel to feudal