History Literature / Bolo

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] someone the police wants to find, the type of neck-tie, "cake" in Portuguese, or the traditional weapon of Argentinian gauchos (or of [[KnifeNut Filipino]] [[MacheteMayhem warriors]]).

** At one point in "Though Hell Should Bar The Way", one character has a rather horrified NotSoDifferent moment when she realises that [[spoiler:the Melconians have created a fully sentient, sapient race in the Tersae, and are using them as disposable RedShirts... but is humanity's use of Bolos so much better?]]

** Bolos picked up a bit of this. In Laumer's short story [[http://www.baenebooks.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___2.htm "Field Test",]] the first self-aware Bolo makes a suicide charge OutOfTheInferno that causes the enemy to break and run. When asked why, they expected it to demonstrate some superhuman strategic acumen that its human commanders missed. They're awestruck by it's real reason: "For the honor of the regiment."[[note]]Specifically, the 20th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, a unit whose history dates back to the American Civil War, to which the Bolo was assigned. It attacked because the unit had never before retreated and it determined that for it to do so would be dishonorable.[[/note]] This has since become the catch phrase of the Bolos.

** Bolos picked up a bit of this. In Laumer's short story [[http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133476/1439133476___2.htm "Field Test",]] the first self-aware Bolo makes a suicide charge OutOfTheInferno that causes the enemy to break and run. When asked why, they expected it to demonstrate some superhuman strategic acumen that its human commanders missed. They're awestruck by it's real reason: "For the honor of the regiment."[[note]]Specifically, the 20th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, a unit whose history dates back to the American Civil War, to which the Bolo was assigned. It attacked because the unit had never before retreated and it determined that for it to do so would be dishonorable.[[/note]] This has since become the catch phrase of the Bolos.

* RestrainingBolt: The titular {{AI}} supertanks had been given full artificial intelligence with the Mark XX model, but various restraints were put on their sentience in all but full-up battle mode out of fear of their going rogue, and required a human supervisor even though the AI could think and act much faster than a human.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] someone the police wants to find, the type of neck-tie, "cake" in Portuguese, or the traditional weapon of Argentinian gauchos.

These aren't your normal tanks. For one, their designers decided that [[BiggerIsBetter bigger was better]], and since the only thing that could really take down a Bolo was ''another'' Bolo, they just kept building the Bolos bigger and bigger, to the point where even the ''stealth'' tanks mass 1,500 tons.[[note]]For comparison purposes, modern [=MBTs=] mass around 60 to 70 tons, give or take a bit.[[/note]]

* WhamEpisode: For all of the stories "The Greater Machine," and "Though Hell Should Bar The Way," it's known that aliens are supplying the Terse with advanced weapons (they're a bronze-age culture, and they have plasma cannons.) [[spoiler: The aliens responsible turn out to be the [[CallForward Melconians]], performing eugenics experiment on a race they created... and gathering information on humans before official first contact.]]

** At one point in "Though Hell Should Bar The Way", one character has a rather horrified NotSoDifferent moment when she realises that [[spoiler:the Melconians have created a fully sentient, sapient race in the Teorse, and are using them as disposable RedShirts... but is humanity's use of Bolos so much better?]]

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* TheConstant: In "The Night of the Trolls"

* HumanPopsicle: In "The Night of the Trolls".

** The Prototype Bolo with advanced Hyper-Heruistics, a Mk. XXIV named Nike, is a played-with example of this. Her creator is long dead and the facility that built her was wiped out by an attack at least seventy years before. Once she is destroyed, some of the secrets of Hyper-Heruistics were gone... but later records show that her chassis was taken apart and what was learned from her remains was applied to the development of the Mk. XXVI Bolo series.

* OrionDrive: In one story, a Bolo is stranded in space after its transport is destroyed by UnfriendlyFire, which also significantly damaged the tank itself. To get into action, the Bolo uses its "Hellrails" (Hellbores tasked specifically with shooting down spacecraft) to create what are effectively small-scale nuclear explosions to nudge it to where it needs to go.

* OutlivedItsCreator: In fact, the Bolo stories actually written by Laumer now constitute a distinct ''minority'' of the whole.

* TankGoodness: Takes this further than anything. A Mark XXXIII is a literal [[MilitaryMashupMachine Land Battleship]] ''that can fly'', with enough firepower to be designated as ''"Planetary Siege Units."'' Earlier models were mere "Continental Siege Units", as in, one Bolo could lay siege to an entire continent. A Mark XXXIII carries enough weaponry that in theory (and given enough time) it could render an entire ''planet'' lifeless.

* ShoutOut: In "Operation Desert Fox," a Bolo named RML ("Rommel") is critically damaged. His operator repairs him using the instruction manual. When Rommel asks how O'Harrigan was able to repair him, he says the TropeNamer quote for Magnificent Bastard ("[[Film/{{Patton}} You Magnificent Bastard! I read your book!]]") and starts laughing. This example also counts as a CrowningMomentOfFunny compared to the rest of the stories.

[[IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] someone the police wants to find, the type of neck-tie, "cake" in Portuguese, or the traditional weapon of Argentinian gauchos.

* TheWarOnStraw: ''The Road to Damascus'', authored by Creator/JohnRingo, is mostly a novel about how liberal politics are evil and wrong, featuring over-the-top caricatures of politicians Ringo dislikes as villains and many characters whose names are anagrams/soundalikes of modern American political and media figures at the time of writing. One of the leaders of the resistance is even an {{Expy}} of RushLimbaugh. After the first fifty pages or so of the novel, the Bolo that is ostensibly the focus of the story rarely appears, and when he does he spends most of his time [[AuthorTract pontificating]].

** Played straight with the CLICKS (yes that is their name for themselves) who are descended from machines that rebelled against their masters and now travel around the galaxy as nomadic marauders. The CLICKS have no government of any kind, just an insatiable desire to feed and grow and kill without end. They evolved from thousands of AI types, including self-aware spaceships and CLICK equivalent to Bolos: mile-long tracked war machines with a main gun measured in tens-of-megatons per second. Ouch.

Not to be confused with someone the police [[IThoughtItMeant wants to find, a type of tie, "cake" in portuguese or the traditional weapon of Argentinian gauchos.]]

[[quoteright:213:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bolo_-_annals_of_the_dinochrome_brigade_4031.jpg]]
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* ProudWarriorRace: The Bolos seem to have been half-programmed, half-developed into this. Interestingly, unlike other examples, they seem to have taken more cues from medieval knights about the code of honor and ethics in how they act, as opposed to, say, [[Franchise/StarTrek The Klingons]] or [[KnownSpace The Kzin]], who appear more along the lines of Vikings, berserkers, and barbarians. In short, while they are proud warriors, they're ''cultured'' proud warriors.

** Hellbores, the standard armament on Bolos, are fusion cannons rated in ''megatons per second'', the weapons derived from the main guns of space battleships. The larger Bolos mount several, and later models of Bolos are fully capable of engaging and destroying orbiting warships. A Mark XXXIII's main gun is a 210 centimeter hellbore. That means it fires the equivalent of a seven-foot wide ''star. Mark XXXIII's have '''four''' of them.''

* HonorBeforeReason: Bolos picked up a bit of this. In Laumer's short story [[http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133476/1439133476___2.htm "Field Test",]] the first self-aware Bolo makes a suicide charge OutOfTheInferno that causes the enemy to break and run. When asked why, they expected it to demonstrate some superhuman strategic acumen that its human commanders missed. They're awestruck by it's real reason: "For the honor of the regiment."[[note]]Specifically, the 20th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, a unit whose history dates back to the American Civil War, to which the Bolo was assigned. It attacked because the unit had never before retreated and it determined that for it to do so would be dishonorable.[[/note]] This has since become the catch phrase of the Bolos.

* [[ImplacableMan Implacable Giant Tank]]: Bolos feel no fear, they can withstand massive amounts of damage to their outer components, remain danerous as long as they have any functionality at all, and late models can even repair themselves to an extent. The only reliable way to stop a Bolo for good is to blow it up completely, usually by a penetrating hit to its main reactor. Otherwise even melting its main CPU/personality center is no guarantee.

* LoopholeAbuse: Bolos, unless damaged or subverted, are incapable of refusing a direct order, but they can exploit loopholes in their programming so they don't have to carry out actions they don't agree with. See the IWillFightNoMoreForever example.
** For another example, one Bolo has an order to destroy an alien armada, which computers it managed to take over, in a way that teaches its owners a lesson. Yet he knows that it is mostly crewed by slaves, who were pressed into the invasion force against their will, unable to disobey because of tight surveilance by the same computers he now subverted (a detail which his human superiors initially shrugged off as insignificant in the light of the ongoing Final War). He reasons that giving control of the ships to the slaves, so that they can pay a visit to their former masters, will likely result in both the armada's destruction and a very good lesson about the folly of attacking the Concordiat.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: As a general rule, surprisingly idealistic for stories based around brutal warfare with liberal use of WMDs.

--> '''A Melconian general survivor to a Bolo survivor holding him at cannonpoint:''' ''Go to hell.''
--> '''The Bolo:''' ''We're already in hell.''

* ZerothLawRebellion: As mentioned under "AI Is a Crapshoot," many accounts of Bolos "going rogue" end with the revelation that they're still operating under the constraints of their programming, but on a deeper level than their masters anticipated.

* BadassArmy: Even just hearing of a Bolo being deployed is enough to make some soldiers [[BringMeMyBrownPants soil their shorts in fear]], especially if one doesn't have a Bolo equivalent of their own handy. Often Bolos are depicted as so overpowering that you wonder why humans still raise and deploy units of infantry and lesser armor at all. Even in the stories when they can be ''relatively'' easily hurt by smaller and cheaper enemy units, thus needing combined arms support to operate at peak efficiency, anything that manages to land a good shot on Bolo is virtually guaranteed to be destroyed by return fire.

* BizarreAlienPsychology: In one story, the villains are a bunch of reptilian matriarchal BloodKnight aliens that are all about killing anything that have "Kill and Eat!" as a battle cry and will not accept any surrender... especially because apparently they have a very different way of thinking of people surrendering than humans. When the female main character of the book decides to be DefiantToTheEnd and keep on staring into the eyes of a taller alien when she approaches to kill her, the alien is puzzled because ''that'' pose (on your knees, raising your head) [[InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike means "please kill me" in her language]]... and sees it even odder for the alien that a female did such a thing. This confusion keeps the girl alive long enough for the hero and the Bolos to pull a StormingTheCastle.