And a voice from one of the staterooms I’d never seen open barked, “Outside with them both!”
I heard a whir and then a clang and I looked up to see ten feet of giant robot getting set to knock me fifty miles. I back-flipped out through the port and hit in the turf and the McGowan robot hit beside me with a clang.
The ship’s lock closed and I grabbed at its tail. I’d been come over again. It was gone.
The man paused and took a sorrowful drink. And then, on urging, finally resumed his tale.
“What did they do? Heck, what else could they do? There I was, a man posing as a robot with a robot posing as a man. What did they do with me? They sent me into the galactic prison, of course, and I worked for a long, long time on those mines.
“What happened to whoever it was that was really in charge? Well, I don’t know, to tell the truth. But I have my opinions.”
From his jacket he pulled something he must have used as a weapon. “I saved a piece of it and made it up pretty-like while I worked in the mines. He’d come over me so many times, it was only fair to come over him just once. What is it? Why, it’s his right steering tube, of course.
“And I drove my fist through the pressure hull for good measure. Came off awful easy. Often wondered where he crashed. Repaired it? How could he? The only spacesuit aboard the Opportunity I used to make Battling Bolto’s faceplate from, it being the only stuff anywhere in stock. Besides, all the air was out of the ship. You ever seen him in orbit anyplace, you fellows?”
I told him no because you don’t find a ship once it is lost in space. And I asked him was this the reason he was in the Survey now.
“Why, no,” he said. “Truth to tell, they let me keep my McGowan robot, so I had a ‘manager.’ We were on circuit for years after that as Battling Bolto. Selling empty tin skins, of course.”
Glossary
STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE reflect the words and expressions used in the 1930s and 1940s, adding unique flavor and authenticity to the tales. While a character’s speech may often reflect regional origins, it also can convey attitudes common in the day. So that readers can better grasp such cultural and historical terms, uncommon words or expressions of the era, the following glossary has been provided.
alpha: first in order of brightness.
ballyhoo: to attract the attention of customers by raising a clamor. The ballyhoo is a sophisticated “commercial,” usually illustrated with quick appearances by the performers given to draw a crowd to see a show.
bead, drawing a rifle: variation of “to draw a bead on”; taking aim at. This term alludes to the bead, a small metal knob on a firearm used as a front sight.
braying: uttering loudly and harshly.
bucks: men, especially strong or spirited young men.
chilblain: inflammation, followed by itchy irritation on hands, feet or ears that have been exposed to moist cold.
coming over or come over: deceiving or taking advantage of someone.
complection: complexion; general appearance or nature.
constable: a law enforcement officer.
crookt: crooked; bent.
ergs: units of energy.
flimflam: to trick, deceive, swindle or cheat.
gibbous: of the moon, between the half-moon and the full moon.
golblamed: goddamned; used as an expression of anger, disgust, etc.
hicks: people regarded as gullible or unsophisticated.
horizon blue and gold: a uniform; a field uniform the color of horizon blue, a variable color averaging a light greenish blue to blue, with gold buttons.
hummocks: ridges or hills of ice in an ice field.
ill-starred: doomed to end in failure or disaster.
import: 1. consequence or importance; matter. 2. meaning; implication.
limned: outlined in clear detail; delineated.
mackinaw: a thick heavy woolen cloth, usually with a plaid design.
mean: inferior in grade or quality.
patch on, isn’t a: to not be as good as someone or something else.
physiognomy: the features of somebody’s face, especially when they are used as indicators of that person’s character or temperament.
plugged: (of a coin) with the center removed and replaced with a worthless metal.
proof: 1. tested or proved strength, as of armor. 2. capable of resisting harm, injury or damage.
quarters, at: at a proper or assigned station or place, as for officers and crew on a warship.
shod: covered for protection, strength or ornament.
subscriptions: funds raised through sums of money pledged.
tramp: a freight vessel that does not run regularly between fixed ports, but takes a cargo wherever shippers desire.
L. Ron Hubbard in the
Golden Age of
Pulp Fiction
In writing an adventure story
a writer has to know that he is adventuring
for a lot of people who cannot.
The writer has to take them here and there
about the globe and show them
excitement and love and realism.
As long as that writer is living the part of an
adventurer when he is hammering
the keys, he is succeeding with his story.
Adventuring is a state of mind.
If you adventure through life, you have a
good chance to be a success on paper.
Adventure doesn’t mean globe-trotting,
exactly, and it doesn’t mean great deeds.
Adventuring is like art.
You have to live it to make it real.
— L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
and American
Pulp Fiction
BORN March 13, 1911, L. Ron Hubbard lived a life at least as expansive as the stories with which he enthralled a hundred million readers through a fifty-year career.
Originally hailing from Tilden, Nebraska, he spent his formative years in a classically rugged Montana, replete with the cowpunchers, lawmen and desperadoes who would later people his Wild West adventures. And lest anyone imagine those adventures were drawn from vicarious experience, he was not only breaking broncs at a tender age, he was also among the few whites ever admitted into Blackfoot society as a bona fide blood brother. While if only to round out an otherwise rough and tumble youth, his mother was that rarity of her time—a thoroughly educated woman—who introduced her son to the classics of Occidental literature even before his seventh birthday.
But as any dedicated L. Ron Hubbard reader will attest, his world extended far beyond Montana. In point of fact, and as the son of a United States naval officer, by the age of eighteen he had traveled over a quarter of a million miles. Included therein were three Pacific crossings to a then still mysterious Asia, where he ran with the likes of Her British Majesty’s agent-in-place for North China, and the last in the line of Royal Magicians from the court of Kublai Khan. For the record, L. Ron Hubbard was also among the first Westerners to gain admittance to forbidden Tibetan monasteries below Manchuria, and his photographs of China’s Great Wall long graced American geography texts.
Upon his return to the United States and a hasty completion of his interrupted high school education, the young Ron Hubbard entered George Washington University. There, as fans of his aerial adventures may have heard, he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation. He also earned a place in free-flight record books for the longest sustained flight above Chicago. Moreover, as a roving reporter for Sportsman Pilot (featuring his first professionally penned articles), he further helped inspire a generation of pilots who would take America to world airpower.
L. Ron Hubbard, left, at Congressional
Airport, Washington, DC, 1931, with members of George Washington University flying club.
Immediately beyond his sophomore year, Ron embarked on the first of his famed ethnological expeditions, initially to then untrammeled Caribbean shores (descriptions of which would later fill a whole series of West Indies mystery-thrillers). That the Puerto Rican interior would also figure into the future of Ron Hubbard stories was likewise no accident. For in addition to cultural studies of the island, a 1932–33 LRH expedition is rightly remembered as conducting the first complete mineralogical survey of a Puerto Rico under United States jurisdiction.
There was many another adventure along this vein: As a lifetime member of the famed Explorers Club, L. Ron Hubbard charted North Pacific waters with the first shipboard radio direction finder, and so pioneered a long-range navigation system universally employed until the late twentieth century. While not to put too fine an edge on it, he also held a rare Master Mariner’s license to pilot any vessel, of any tonnage in any ocean.
Capt. L. Ron Hubbard in Ketchikan, Alaska, 1940, on his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition, the first of three voyages conducted under the Explorers Club Flag.
Yet lest we stray too far afield, there is an LRH note at this juncture in his saga, and it reads in part:
“I started out writing for the pulps, writing the best I knew, writing for every mag on the stands, slanting as well as I could.”
To which one might add: His earliest submissions date from the summer of 1934, and included tales drawn from true-to-life Asian adventures, with characters roughly modeled on British/American intelligence operatives he had known in Shanghai. His early Westerns were similarly peppered with details drawn from personal experience. Although therein lay a first hard lesson from the often cruel world of the pulps. His first Westerns were soundly rejected as lacking the authenticity of a Max Brand yarn (a particularly frustrating comment given L. Ron Hubbard’s Westerns came straight from his Montana homeland, while Max Brand was a mediocre New York poet named Frederick Schiller Faust, who turned out implausible six-shooter tales from the terrace of an Italian villa).
Nevertheless, and needless to say, L. Ron Hubbard persevered and soon earned a reputation as among the most publishable names in pulp fiction, with a ninety percent placement rate of first-draft manuscripts. He was also among the most prolific, averaging between seventy and a hundred thousand words a month. Hence the rumors that L. Ron Hubbard had redesigned a typewriter for faster keyboard action and pounded out manuscripts on a continuous roll of butcher paper to save the precious seconds it took to insert a single sheet of paper into manual typewriters of the day.
L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1930, at the outset of a literary career that would finally span half a century.
That all L. Ron Hubbard stories did not run beneath said byline is yet another aspect of pulp fiction lore. That is, as publishers periodically rejected manuscripts from top-drawer authors if only to avoid paying top dollar, L. Ron Hubbard and company just as frequently replied with submissions under various pseudonyms. In Ron’s case, the list included: Rene Lafayette, Captain Charles Gordon, Lt. Scott Morgan and the notorious Kurt von Rachen—supposedly on the lam for a murder rap, while hammering out two-fisted prose in Argentina. The point: While L. Ron Hubbard as Ken Martin spun stories of Southeast Asian intrigue, LRH as Barry Randolph authored tales of romance on the Western range—which, stretching between a dozen genres is how he came to stand among the two hundred elite authors providing close to a million tales through the glory days of American Pulp Fiction.
A Man of Many Names
Between 1934 and 1950, L. Ron Hubbard authored more than fifteen million words of fiction in more than two hundred classic publications.
To supply his fans and editors with stories across an array of genres and pulp titles, he adopted fifteen pseudonyms in addition to his already renowned L. Ron Hubbard byline.
______
Winchester Remington Colt
Lt. Jonathan Daly
Capt. Charles Gordon
Capt. L. Ron Hubbard
Bernard Hubbel
Michael Keith
Rene Lafayette
Legionnaire 148
Legionnaire 14830
Ken Martin
Scott Morgan
Lt. Scott Morgan
Kurt von Rachen
Barry Randolph
Capt. Humbert Reynolds
In evidence of exactly that, by 1936 L. Ron Hubbard was literally leading pulp fiction’s elite as president of New York’s American Fiction Guild. Members included a veritable pulp hall of fame: Lester “Doc Savage” Dent, Walter “The Shadow” Gibson, and the legendary Dashiell Hammett—to cite but a few.
Also in evidence of just where L. Ron Hubbard stood within his first two years on the American pulp circuit: By the spring of 1937, he was ensconced in Hollywood, adopting a Caribbean thriller for Columbia Pictures, remembered today as The Secret of Treasure Island. Comprising fifteen thirty-minute episodes, the L. Ron Hubbard screenplay led to the most profitable matinée serial in Hollywood history. In accord with Hollywood culture, he was thereafter continually called upon to rewrite/doctor scripts—most famously for long-time friend and fellow adventurer Clark Gable.
The 1937 Secret of Treasure Island, a fifteen-episode serial adapted for the screen by L. Ron Hubbard from his novel, Murder at Pirate Castle.
In the interim—and herein lies another distinctive chapter of the L. Ron Hubbard story—he continually worked to open Pulp Kingdom gates to up-and-coming authors. Or, for that matter, anyone who wished to write. It was a fairly unconventional stance, as markets were already thin and competition razor sharp. But the fact remains, it was an L. Ron Hubbard hallmark that he vehemently lobbied on behalf of young authors—regularly supplying instructional articles to trade journals, guest-lecturing to short story classes at George Washington University and Harvard, and even founding his own creative writing competition. It was established in 1940, dubbed the Golden Pen, and guaranteed winners both New York representation and publication in Argosy.
But it was John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction that finally proved the most memorable LRH vehicle. While every fan of L. Ron Hubbard’s galactic epics undoubtedly knows the story, it nonetheless bears repeating: By late 1938, the pulp publishing magnate of Street & Smith was determined to revamp Astounding Science Fiction for broader readership. In particular, senior editorial director F. Orlin Tremaine called for stories with a stronger human element. When acting editor John W. Campbell balked, preferring his spaceship-driven tales, Tremaine enlisted Hubbard. Hubbard, in turn, replied with the genre’s first truly character-driven works, wherein heroes are pitted not against bug-eyed monsters but the mystery and majesty of deep space itself—and thus was launched the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
The names alone are enough to quicken the pulse of any science fiction aficionado, including LRH friend and protégé, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Ray Bradbury. Moreover, when coupled with LRH stories of fantasy, we further come to what’s rightly been described as the foundation of every modern tale of horror: L. Ron Hubbard’s immortal Fear. It was rightly proclaimed by Stephen King as one of the very few works to genuinely warrant that overworked term “classic”—as in: “This is a classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror. . . . This is one of the really, really good ones.”
L. Ron Hubbard, 1948, among fellow science fiction luminaries at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto.
To accommodate the greater body of L. Ron Hubbard fantasies, Street & Smith inaugurated Unknown—a classic pulp if there ever was one, and wherein readers were soon thrilling to the likes of Typewriter in the Sky and Slaves of Sleep of which Frederik Pohl would declare: “There are bits and pieces from Ron’s work that became part of the language in w
ays that very few other writers managed.”
And, indeed, at J. W. Campbell Jr.’s insistence, Ron was regularly drawing on themes from the Arabian Nights and so introducing readers to a world of genies, jinn, Aladdin and Sinbad—all of which, of course, continue to float through cultural mythology to this day.
At least as influential in terms of post-apocalypse stories was L. Ron Hubbard’s 1940 Final Blackout. Generally acclaimed as the finest anti-war novel of the decade and among the ten best works of the genre ever authored—here, too, was a tale that would live on in ways few other writers imagined. Hence, the later Robert Heinlein verdict: “Final Blackout is as perfect a piece of science fiction as has ever been written.”
Like many another who both lived and wrote American pulp adventure, the war proved a tragic end to Ron’s sojourn in the pulps. He served with distinction in four theaters and was highly decorated for commanding corvettes in the North Pacific. He was also grievously wounded in combat, lost many a close friend and colleague and thus resolved to say farewell to pulp fiction and devote himself to what it had supported these many years—namely, his serious research.
Portland, Oregon, 1943; L. Ron Hubbard, captain of the US Navy subchaser PC 815.
But in no way was the LRH literary saga at an end, for as he wrote some thirty years later, in 1980:
“Recently there came a period when I had little to do. This was novel in a life so crammed with busy years, and I decided to amuse myself by writing a novel that was pure science fiction.”
That work was Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000. It was an immediate New York Times bestseller and, in fact, the first international science fiction blockbuster in decades. It was not, however, L. Ron Hubbard’s magnum opus, as that distinction is generally reserved for his next and final work: The 1.2 million word Mission Earth.