Jame Retief is the main character in a series of satirical science fiction stories by Keith Laumer. The stories were written over a span of thirty years beginning in the early 1960s, without much regard for chronology or any particular scheme. The first Retief story, Diplomat-at-Arms, appeared in the magazine Fantastic Science Fiction Stories (volume 9, number 1) in January 1960. Algis Budrys noted that the name "Retief" is, approximately, "fighter pronounced backwards".