The Crossroads
4/5
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About this ebook
Think you know what's going on in the world? Think again. Long before Rod Serling took us into The Twilight Zone, L. Ron Hubbard brought us to The Crossroads—a place where thought-provoking twists and turns are delivered with plenty of wit and wisdom.
Farmer Eben Smith is fed up with big government telling him how to run his life and his business. They pay him to bury his crops while folks starve in the streets, and he's not going to take it anymore. He's declaring his independence, loading up his fruits and vegetables, and heading for the city to wheel and deal.….
But before he can trade in his turnips, Eben'll have to deal with something bigger—a break in the space/time continuum. He's at The Crossroads, where reality is turned upside-down and inside out. And before it's over, he'll turn his turnips into liquor, and the liquor into guns and gold, as he plunges into strange new worlds … finding ways to wreak havoc in all of them.
The Crossroads first appeared in the February 1941 issue of Unknown Fantasy Fiction. By then Hubbard's stature as a writer was well established. As author and critic Robert Silverberg puts it: he had become a "master of the art of narrative" Hubbard's editors urged him to apply his gift for succinct characterization, original plot, deft pacing and imaginative action to a genre that was new, and essentially foreign, to him—science fiction and fantasy. The rest is history.
Also includes the fantasy adventures, “Borrowed Glory,” the haunting story of two immortals who wager on two mortals given a single day of love … a wager that leads to heartbreak and tragedy; and “The Devil's Rescue” based on the legend of The Flying Dutchman, in which the sole survivor of a disaster at sea is "rescued" by the devil himself and finds that fate rests on a roll of the dice.
“Amusing … a nostalgic delight.” —Publishers Weekly
* An International Book Awards Finalists
L. Ron Hubbard
With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most enduring and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard. Then too, of course, there is all L. Ron Hubbard represents as the Founder of Dianetics and Scientology and thus the only major religion born in the 20th century.
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Reviews for The Crossroads
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Crossroads is a satire dating from the February 1941 issue of "Unknown" magazine. Hubbard was no stranger to satire. Portions of Battlefield Earth were satirical representations, i.e., characters like Rogodeter Snowl and Roof Arsebogger are cut from the fabric of satire while The House of Plunder is Hubbard's satirical reference to a Tolnep legislative center. His final work, Mission Earth, is a satire. The Crossroads is written in the same style as Mission Earth. Farmer Eben Smith, encountering a military officer at a crossroads in a future where gold is banned, is told simply: "...you do not realize that a totalitarian state is far too powerful to be overthrown. You have seen what happens to the enemies of the Greater Dictatorship." Throughout his career Hubbard was consistent in lampooning corrupt public officials and warning of the dangers of a totalitarian society. Such warnings were not merely the imaginative work of a pulp writer, but rather the raw perception of a man who witnessed the polemics that resulted in socialism and communism. And that Hubbard recognized the manifestation of these elements in American culture is a telling point. Readers of fantasy will enjoy this satirical and humorous tale. Included in this reprinting are the stories "Borrowed Glory" which is an acknowledged classic; and "The Devil's Rescue" which deserves a wide audience. As always, I also recommend the audio book. Each audio book features a multicast performance with music and sound effects reminiscent of radio's golden age.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I also saw a live performance of it in Hollywood. Story lines are in other reviews. I do like the whimsical stories of Mr Hubbard quite a lot and Eben the farmer is a hoot in this one. A practical yankee trader with some quite peculiar circumstances at THE CROSSROADS.
Highly recommended for fun and chuckles and surprises.
Very Imaginative! You will laugh!!!
Book preview
The Crossroads - L. Ron Hubbard
SELECTED FICTION WORKS
BY L. RON HUBBARD
FANTASY
The Case of the Friendly Corpse
Death’s Deputy
Fear
The Ghoul
The Indigestible Triton
Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep
Typewriter in the Sky
The Ultimate Adventure
SCIENCE FICTION
Battlefield Earth
The Conquest of Space
The End Is Not Yet
Final Blackout
The Kilkenny Cats
The Kingslayer
The Mission Earth Dekalogy*
Ole Doc Methuselah
To the Stars
ADVENTURE
The Hell Job series
WESTERN
Buckskin Brigades
Empty Saddles
Guns of Mark Jardine
Hot Lead Payoff
A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s
novellas and short stories is provided at the back.
*Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes
TitlePgArt.jpgPublished by
Galaxy Press, LLC
7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200
Hollywood, CA 90028
© 2008 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.
Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.
Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.
Cover art; The Crossroads and Borrowed Glory story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations; Story Preview cover art; and Story Preview and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission.
ISBN 978-1-59212-532-6 ePub version
ISBN 978-1-59212-745-0 Kindle version
ISBN 978-1-59212-368-1 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-241-7 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928019
Contents
FOREWORD
THE CROSSROADS
BORROWED GLORY
THE DEVIL’S RESCUE
STORY PREVIEW:
THE TRAMP
GLOSSARY
L. RON HUBBARD
IN THE GOLDEN AGE
OF PULP FICTION
THE STORIES FROM THE
GOLDEN AGE
FOREWORD
Stories from Pulp Fiction’s Golden Age
AND it was a golden age.
The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.
Pulp
magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class slick
magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the rest of us,
adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.
The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.
In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.
Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.
Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.
In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.
Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called Hell Job,
in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.
Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.
This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.
Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.
L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.
Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.
—Kevin J. Anderson
KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!
The Crossroads
The Crossroads
IT was not like Eben Smith to resign himself to the fates and vagaries of an economic muddle he could not fathom, not even to the AAA or the HOLC or the FLC or the other various unsyllabic combinations which he regularly, each morning, collected in his RFD box.
It ain’t right,
he