Fifty-Fifty O'Brien by L. Ron Hubbard Page B

spoke.
    â€œMy apologies, Your Highness. We are searching for one Balchard, leader of the Sons of Freedom, reported to have been on this train. My stupidity, Your Highness, is only that of zeal. May I be granted the favor of remaining aboard and posting adequate guard over your compartment?”
    â€œI do not care,” said Blacky Lee, “to have attention called to my presence aboard the Trans-Balkan Express. You are excused, Lieutenant. Carry on.”
    The lieutenant, embarrassed, about-faced and marched out. Angrily he motioned his men from the corridor.
    The trainmaster stood blinking and peering, stupefied, and undoubtedly promising himself a new set of glasses, pride or no pride, at the next stopover.
    â€œIs … is there anything Your Highness could wish, sire?”
    â€œYes,” said Blacky Lee. “A bottle of anisette for my friend and a ham sandwich for myself.”
    â€œImmediately, Your Highness.” And he stumbled away.
    Stub looked, slack-jawed, at Blacky Lee, finding it difficult to force a question out of his constricted throat.
    â€œYour Highness?” gulped Stub. “He—they called you ‘Your Highness’!”
    Blacky Lee smiled enigmatically and slid the Webley 9 mm into his side pocket. The train had started again and he sank back, staring thoughtfully out of the window at the flying night.…
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L. Ron Hubbard in the
Golden Age of
Pulp Fiction

 
    I n 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.
    â€” L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard
and American
Pulp Fiction
    B ORN 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