I’m well aware that L. Ron Hubbard is still a controversial figure, years after his death, but long before there was any controversy about him, he was a prolific, well-known pulp author. Having put my hands on a number of the recent reprints of his pulp stories, I thought I’d take a look at a few of them and consider that part of his career.
“Branded Outlaw” is a Western novella originally published in the October 1938 issue of FIVE-NOVELS MONTHLY. The hero is Lee Weston, a young man from New Mexico who has gone off to Wyoming and acquired something of a reputation as a gunfighter. He returns home to his father’s ranch in New Mexico in response to a plea for help, only to find the ranch house burned down and his father dead. Lee knows that one of his father’s old enemies from trail-driving days has recently purchased a ranch in the area, so he’s convinced that the rival cattleman is responsible for what happened to his father. But when Lee gets shot up and it’s the old enemy’s beautiful daughter who rescues him and nurses him back to health, he figures there’s maybe more going on in the valley than he realized at first. If you’ve ever read many stories from the Western pulps or watched any Western B-movies, you won’t find any surprises in the plot of this one. I was impressed, though, with the quality of the writing. Vivid but not long-winded descriptions of the setting, a very fast pace, good action scenes, and believable dialogue combine to make this a pretty entertaining yarn.
“Cattle King for a Day”, a novella from the March 1937 issue of ALL WESTERN, is even better. It starts with a similar premise – Chinook Shannon (great name) arrives in Montana to investigate the death of his grandfather and claim his legacy, the Slash S ranch. Gunmen try to stop him from getting there, but they’re unsuccessful. Chinook finds that his ownership of the ranch is threatened. His stock is all dead, killed by cyanide poisoning from the run-off from a nearby mine, and the bank is about to foreclose on the land the very next day unless Chinook can come up with $26,000 to pay off the debt. Hubbard throws some nice plot twists into this one, and I didn’t figure out exactly what was going on until the very end of the story. This is another entertaining story with some fine action scenes. The reprint volume also includes a Hubbard short story, “Come and Get It”, which uses the old plot about an Easterner coming west to claim a ranch he’s inherited, but it has some funny scenes despite the predictability of the plot.
All three of these are entertaining stories, and that's why I read pulp fiction. I plan to read more of Hubbard's stories from that era soon.
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16 comments:
I enjoyed BRANDED OUTLAW as well.
You should know that all the money you spend on books by this monster go into the coffers of the Scientology Organized Crime Family, as evil an organization you could find.
Cap'n Bob is right. I read some of Hubbard's sf a few years ago (in paperback editions from the 60s & 70s I found in used book stores) and liked them a lot. But I refused to buy any of the current crop of reprints because of the very reason Cap'n Bob mentioned. A shame.
The recent New Yorker investigative story about the church is worth reading. We can be grateful, I guess, that few if any other pulp writers decided to found a new religion.
Back in his pulp writing days, Hubbard once said if you want to become rich, invent a religion. Looks like he followed his own advice even though some say Scientology is not a religion, etc.
He was capable of writing good pulp fiction, for instance some of his work for ASTOUNDING, UNKNOWN, and ARGOSY, is quite well done. But I can certainly understand Cap'n Bob and Blogorilla not wanting to support Hubbard's brain child.
Hubbard was a very good pulp writer despite the fact that he decided to cash in on his Dianetics fantasy.
One can, however, buy 'em secondhand...as I've usually done with the WRITERS OF THE FUTURE volumes (Budrys, Card et al. putting the cult money to a good use). I have a copy of FEAR kicking around, too, also purchased on the used market...and the hilarious BATTLEFIELD EARTH soundtrack album, likewise purchased very inexpensively from a used record store decades back.
While John W. Campbell was enabling Dianetics (and other similar fringe matters) in ASTOUNDING, Ray Palmer was pushing flying saucers (and other similar fringe matters) in AMAZING and OTHER WORLDS (and they not alone, hello FANTASTIC UNIVERSE)...Sam Merwin and Sam Mines and (perhaps particularly) Howard Browne had their flaws, but they didn't Do That.
That's a soundtrack to the novel, no less, with Chick Corea and other famous COS musicians on it briefly.
Can you imagine what would happen if Norvell Page had tried to start a religion?
Check out Operation Clambake for the lowdown on that lowdown cult.
I'm not commenting on the quality of the stories, just warning people that their money will go into the Scientology coffers.
Thank you Mr Reasoner for an objective review without bringing religion into it. As for ex-Scientologist Robert S. Napier’s comments, the Scientology organization’s negative reputation is not only deserved but well documented. However, that doesn’t mean the average Scientologist is evil which is what Napier wants you to believe. The Catholic Church has a problem with priests abusing people but does that mean all Catholics are evil? Napier has, in fact, belittled innocent people because of their religious beliefs and that’s evil in its purest form.
Well, my intention was just to let any controversy play out on its own, because my only real interest is in the stories themselves, but . . .
I debated whether or not to even post about them, because I knew they might generate some strong comments. I tend to avoid controversial subjects (some of you may have noticed that there are never any political posts on this blog) simply because I'm more interested in other things. But when it comes to reading, I pretty much read what I want and comment about it if I feel like it. I plan to continue doing that. So it's highly likely there'll be more L. Ron Hubbard posts in the future. I have a number of the reprints on hand, some of which are review copies sent to me by Galaxy Press and some of which were given to me by a friend who knows I like pulp stuff.
To address the comment by Wilson, who I don't know: I'm glad you saw that I was just trying to talk about the stories themselves. However, I do know Bob Napier and don't believe for a second that he's the least bit evil. In fact he's one of the best people I know. He has his opinions (and I strongly suspected he would comment if I posted anything about Hubbard), but as I said, I read what I read, and people are free to comment about it any way they want to. I've never closed comments on a post, and I've only enabled comment moderation once for a short time. I don't intend to do either of those things now.
That's my say. I'm going back into the books now.
Actually, Wilson, I think the average Scientologist is a dupe. It's the organization itself which is evil, as was Hubbard.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, James.
His sea stories weren't all that authentic though.
There was one such (forgot the title) I saw in a local bookstore .. the blurb said "50 gun sloop" or something of the sort. A pirate yarn I guess, or something from the napoleonic wars.
Any warship from the days of sail with 50 guns was a rather antiquated two decker ship of the line rather than a sloop (lightly armed with maybe a dozen far lighter cannon) - and commanded by a full captain (or a 'post captain' in the royal navy) rather than the much more junior commander who'd get a sloop.
By the same token, not sure just how authentic his western yarns were, never read them. [Lou Cameron's early longarms had lots of fairly caustic stuff about dime novelists who'd never been west of, say, chicago, good fun to read]
Concerning the last comment about Hubbard not knowing the west, a long time friend of mine and a big admirer of Max Brand, used to say that Max Brand was one of the biggest fantasy writers of all time. Despite all the millions of words about the west that Brand/Faust wrote, he really was not a westerner. He lived in the East and had a villa in Italy.
Lots like that. Plenty of brits (JT Edson / Terry Harknett aka George Gilman etc)
Come to think of it, Zane Gray was a new york dentist.
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