L. Ron HubbardRezensionen

Definitely one of the best science-fiction books ever written, probably top 15. The writing is solid and the story is sufficiently complex. The only thing really wrong with the book is the spelling and possibly grammar. I don't know Scientology well enough to pick up the themes throughout the book, but they certainly didn't diminish the book's worth.
Sadly, this seems to be the only novel by this author, which is really a shame.

Story: 7.5 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 9
Prose: 7

Tags: Space travel, time, manipulation, outcasts, indentured

2nd L. Ron Hubbarb book and both were amazing. Definitely planning on reading more.

Welp, it's an LRH pulp. If you're buying this to cleanse the Thetans, you'll love it and leave glowing 5-star reviews. If you want to hate bomb it instead of carrying out your plans against Flag, you'll hate it. I am neither of those, so I'll say it was...pretty good? In some ways it was more straight forward than I expected (there was one twist I called early on that just never happened!), but as usual with Galaxy Press, the audiobook is well produced and the voice acting is well-done. I don't think this one had any other stories on it, which is unusual. It's a fine time-passer, perfectly satisfying if you're okay with the genre's writing style and limitations.½

Loot of the Shanung is lower-tier LRH pulp. The action is okay but the characters are dull and flat. I got it from my library's online app and so didn't have to pay anything; I would be annoyed if I shelled out money for it. Only for LRH Enthusiasts or Completists or people really into pulp-era action stories; you're not missing anything here.½

I can imagine when this first appeared it caused a few chills if not scares, but the book really relies on a shock ending, one that’s maybe not so shocking now and one I guessed at shortly before it occurred. It definitely reads like an old classic, so anyone who likes M.R.James may well like this. The events leading to the end are seriously strange. At times, it feels as though the world is melting around the central character and all because of four missing hours and a lost hat. I enjoyed the story, but was not at all fearful.

This fun-filled piece of pulp sci-fi is perhaps the perfect example of the recursive sci-fi genre. Mike de Wolf, the friend of a popular author, is present as the author’s publisher pressures the writer to finish a novel he has received the advance money for. During their conversation, the author mentions Mike would be a perfect example of the villain, the Admiral of a Spanish fleet sent to rid the Caribbean of English pirates. Mike leaves the room and accidentally electrocutes himself in the bathroom, only to find himself still living as the villain of the swashbuckling romance. What follows could be totally unbelievable, but is so full of realistic period action and the logical reactions and comments of Mike to the typewriter he hears in the sky, that it works quite well. “... you get them going and they pretty near write themselves. That is, if the characters are good.”

The two L. Ron Hubbard pulp stories from the 1930s in this collection are quite fun. The first has Detective Bob Clark working undercover at Shreve’s Mammoth Carnival to expose a dope ring. What he finds is a carnival barker’s headless corpse, and discovers that some headhunters from one of the carnival’s sideshows have broken out. Or were they let loose? Does the gruesome scene tie into the dope ring? It’s pretty fun finding out, and there is a ton of action in this whiz-bang style pulp story that is very Norvell Page-like in both pacing and presentation. It moves so fast there’s no time to be bored, and there is plenty of seedy carnival atmosphere — pulp style, nothing deeper — to augment the fights and chases and headless bodies. As if that weren’t enough, there are some fun illustrations of the action along the way. If I have a caveat for this one, it’s only that it moves so quickly that there is barely time to enjoy the atmosphere, so it’s a minor one.

For this reader, it is the second story which is the real gem! Since I can’t describe how good it is without giving a bit away, please read no further if you have an aversion to SPOILERS! In The Death Flyer a man is walking along some old train tracks on the anniversary of a flyer’s wreck, and suddenly on this lonely night he is swept onto the train from the past. The train is filled with ghosts, including a pretty girl in red who appears to know him. Unlike the others, who attack him and desire to throw him off the train, she has been expecting him! There is a wonderful little ending which suggests he might be riding the Death Flyer over and over, until he gets it right!

While this is nothing more than pulp, I found these two short stories to be great fun. My review is for the Kindle edition.

I feel vaguely guilty giving this a bad review, since the publisher's social media people encouraged me (and about a dozen others on Goodreads) to read it, and they were really helpful when I asked them questions.

As much as I've liked some of L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi, this just didn't click with me at all. Written in a simplistic style, Fear has a broad, but promising, premise. But, alas, only pays off in a series of disjointed non-events, only some of which are interesting. It's "and then . . ." storytelling, and it frustrates.


There was a twist near the end that got me excited for the closure of the book, but it was a red herring, and the actual end was much less satisfying and very abrupt.

Vi sfido a leggere più di 15 pagine di questa spazzatura senza mettervi a ridere

Review is of the Ebook version.

Gave it 3.5 stars mostly off of Tah, which is genuinely a very good short story with a genuine touch and craft to it. Take it away and I'd probably give it about 2.5 stars.

Wind-Gone-Mad itself is too long (and there's a version of it on Loot of the Shanung, not sure if it's an earlier draft or he just put out multiple version of the same story), Yellow Loot is way too short and busy.

At the end of the day, they are LRH pulps, what you expect is largely what you get. They're fine.

Joe is a member of the Coast Guard, leading a boat that is after a dope-smuggling pirate. Receiving a distress call from a downed plane, they go to save the plane's passengers but find the pirates have the same idea. A fire fight ensues, leading all to be kidnapped and kept on the pirates' island. Will they be able to escape? Will anyone believe their story?

I liked this audio CD. It was fun. The readers were great! I liked Joe and his crew. I also liked the hostess on the plane. I think her name was Eleanor. She was strong and smart. Joe tried to protect her, but she was able to do that herself as well as make plans to save them also. Joe looked for ways for them to escape. He was in trouble with the Coast Guard, but he knew what he had to do to prove he was loyal. I liked how it all worked out.

I look forward to listening to more in the Stories of the Golden Age series.

Whew this was a long one. I'm sure many are familiar with L Ron Hubbard as the creator of Scientology - I'm not going to let that have any bearing on this review, because really my opinions on the author's beliefs have nothing to do with how I feel about the book itself. I've never seen the movie, but I found the book to be an interesting post-apocalyptic saga of the resilience of mankind. Civilization, if you can call it that, has been thrown back to basics, although some remnants of what the world once was still remain. The big challenge is navigating the aliens that now control Earth as a human, and surviving in a world mankind no longer dominates. Following Johnny on his journey out of his settlement, exploring fallen cities, and trying to survive being captured by aliens was fascinating. The descriptions are vivid, and the thought of the world one-day ending up this way is chilling. A great sci-fi saga that has withstood the test of time.

Great Read!!

Great REad!!!

“Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! … We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it."

In "The Real Harlan Ellison" from Wings Interview (November-December 1978) p. 32”

In 1990 I read a Hubbard novel thinking it was science fiction. It was a fine sleep-inducing bit. The 1100 pages of "Battlefield Earth" could induce a lengthy coma. Like a fool, I finished it and discovered afterwards that I had forgotten how to read. It was weeks before I could read another book. It was comically awful, and implied quite strongly that Hubbard was a mysogynist and who enjoyed quite weirdly sexualised prose. I'm hardly a paragon of political correctness, but I found it to be in fairly poor taste. Scientology was small at the time, and I knew then that it was a cult, but I assumed too few people would be stupid enough for it to proliferate into the monster it is today. I underestimated the stupidity of celebrities I guess.

Back in my awkward teenage SF hoarding years (as opposed to my current awkward 50-something clutter-hoarding years), I picked up the first book in the Mission Earth “dekalogy”. Mission Earth (all ten, there was a blurb on the back of all of them saying that they had to invent a new word "dekalogy" to describe the magnificence of Hubbard's achievement!). If you really want the full dose of Hubbard crazy, Mission Earth is the series to read (not “Battlefield Earth). Even back then the homophobia, anti-psycologist rhetoric, a healthy dose of misogyny, and so much more was simply horrifying. Even while reading it I was horrified, but I still read all ten crappy books.

Re-reading “Battlefield Earth” now I wasn’t able to finish it, perhaps reading 100 pages or so, which is a trait that I picked up a long time ago and have cherished ever since. I've always been able to close a book or walk out of a movie. But I still don’t know why I kept “Battlefield Earth” for over 30 years in my home library…

Hubbard was a cynical scumbag who made himself rich by literally making up an absurd pseudo-religion. But despite his character flaws and his dubious legacy, Hubbard's short novels for Campbell's “Unknown Worlds” and “Astounding Stories” in the 40s are generally pretty spiffy and worth reading. I'm speaking of “Final Blackout”, “Fear”, Typewriter in the Sky”, “Slaves of Sleep”, and “Death's Deputy”. A pity we're unlikely to see any of these reprinted nowadays.

I propose promoting chimps to human status and demoting these dipshits because of their wanton disregard for human intelligence. My dog is smarter than these.

I won a kindle version #GoodreadsGiveaway

The stories, advice, and other writings were overall like all the previous volumes I have read, pretty good, but I always pick up these collections for the artwork. Stand out stories for me were Untrained Luck, The First Warden, The Damned Voyage, Thanatos Drive, Lost Robot, and Release from Service.
Illustrations that were my favorites included Untrained Luck, Thanatos Drive, Lost Robot, and A Certain Slant of Light. The artwork for Untrained Luck was my favorite. I loved the movement, the light and dark contrasts, and the Star Wars appeal.
I'll be keeping an eye out for some of these authors and artists now.

LT Early Reviewers

L. Ron Hubbard, yes that L. Ron Hubbard; the man that founded the church of Scientology. he started life as a pulp writer for the burgeoning magazine market in America in the 1930's. He is best known for his stories in the science fiction and fantasy genres, but also wrote adventure fiction, aviation, travel, mysteries, westerns of course and even romances. Typewriter in the Sky was published in 1951 at the time when Hubbard was launching a career in Dianetics and a few years before he founded the church of Scientology.

The story which is a sort of adventure fantasy was first published in 1940 and was republished with another of his pieces 'Fear' in 1951. It was generally well received and now is considered one of Hubbard's better stories. It begins with pulp writer Horace Hackett up against a deadline for producing his next novel. Pressed for a plot summary he uses the character of one his friends (Mike de Wolf) in a swashbuckling adventure story on the Spanish Main. Suddenly Mike finds himself transported to the year 1640 and is emerging from the sea after being shipwrecked. He hears the sound of a typewriter and slowly realises that he is playing the role of the captain of the Spanish navy who is trying to eradicate English adventurers/pirates from the West Indies. Mike of course is familiar with the pulp stories created by Horace Hackett and fears for his life because he is obviously the villain of the piece and Hackett's villains never get the girl and usually die a horrible death. There follows a tale of derring-do, adventure and romance where Mike is continually trying to subvert the story that he knows Hackett will write. It is an interesting idea, but this is pulp fiction and Hubbard is a pulp fiction writer describing how pulp fiction is created. The story is wildly fantastic and only flirts with historical events, but is entertaining enough.

It is light reading with an original idea that might have been better developed had more time been spent on it, but hey, this is pulp fiction, and it is no more offensive in terms of racism and sexism than much of the genre at the time and so 3 stars.

I read this years ago. No stars AT ALL.

The basic story is good but it is sooooo wordy! Especially the last 100-150 pages. This could do good with a Reader's Digest condensation.

This is one of a number of books that appear in the Golden Age series. For those of you who may be worried that the book may contain references to scientology or dianetics, for which this Author appears to be well-known, you need not worry. At no point in my reading of this did I find any references to either of these.

If you are a reader that is looking for a no frills, straight to the action kind of book, this one will be right up your alley. Like most books written in this era and classified as pulp fiction, there is no thought at all given to any character development, and when every page is packed with action and adventure, why waste time with all the frills and fancy that developing a back story brings with it. As with most of this Authors Golden Age books, the characters portrayed within its pages are not the usual stereotypical fodder one would except from this kind of book; instead they are more archetypical which makes the book more palatable for the reader.

At only 121 pages, this little novella is full of pirates, adventure, mishap, exploits and did I mention pirates? Every kind of piratical adventure imaginable is packed into these pages, and the reader can find themselves turning the last page before they realise it. It’s a high-octane and great uncomplicated read for all ages, especially children who are caught up in the pirate craze, and adults looking for some good old-fashioned escapism. I also feel this book would be suitable as bedtime reading to your children and grandchildren, and would definitely read it to mine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will definitely be hunting down some more of the Golden Age books for those nasty winter afternoons that lay ahead. I highly recommend you do the same.

Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2013/11/19/review-under-the-black-ensign-l-ron-hubbar...




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9781599700601

Per quanto non nutra particolare simpatia per l'autore ho trovato questo classicone un... classicone.
Ho apprezzato che non fosse da un lato una sequenza di tecnobubble e dall'altro un trattato filosofico ma un equilibrato romanzo che, però e purtroppo, porta i segni della vecchiaia.
Contestualizzato all'epoca è sicuramente una gran bella lettura, ma oggi rimane molto qualcosa di già visto, stravisto, già sentito e già sviscerato in tutti i modi.
Ci sono almeno 4 o 5 episodi di ogni serie di fantascienza che seguono la falsariga dei concetti affrontati in questo romanzo.
Onore al merito dei padri.

“The Iron Duke” by L. Ron Hubbard is a quite enjoyable read. It is rather short (only 70 pages), but the tale moves well. It concerns an American con man, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the reigning Duke of a small Balkan country. Much to-and-fro-ing ensues, and by the end the people (but not the Communists) decide that they prefer the con man to the real duke. And he gets the girl.

There is nothing wrong here, but the tale has been told before, and better. “The Prisoner of Zenda” by Hope and “The Mad King” by Burroughs come easily to mind, among others. And at $9.95 for such a small book, one is forced to decide against this tale.

The Phantom Patrol is a tale of pirates and rum-runners, set in the 1930’s. Not terribly original, not badly written, and not offensive in any manner, there simply isn’t anything to recommend this book. And at $9.95 for less than 100 pages, it is over-priced.