About the Author

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 320 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.

Reviews

This novelization by Wolverton of L. Ron Hubbard's unpublished screenplay is the late Hubbard's first published sf in almost ten years. The protagonist, the Appalachian-bred Everett Dumphee, joins the Army to avoid being sent to prison for unwittingly transporting moonshine. His skills earn him the assignment of driving a bumbling, inept lieutenant and a stolen Russian time machine to an Army research facility in Denver. The time machine is accidentally activated during the trip, and the two soldiers are transported to a variety of places, including a fort under attack by Indians in 1870, a Mayan city, and the Ice Age. Wolverton's story dredges up every imaginable clich‚ about Appalachia, the Army, and Native Americans. The novel and its recording have a campy, farcical quality and slapstick sense of humor that do not do justice to either Hubbard's or Wolverton's earlier works. The abridged multicast recording moves too quickly, and the odd country-rock music played at intervals grates on the reader's nerves almost as much as Dumphee's fake West Virginia accent. While the sound effects (e.g., rain, crowds, windshield wipers) and actor Jason Beghe's third-person narration are compelling, the voices of the remainder of the cast sound as though they are coming from the bottom of a particularly deep ocean located about 30 yards to the left of the microphone. Overall, the recording sounds like a bad old-fashioned radio production of a cheesy 1950s B movie. Not recommended.--Leah Sparks, Bowie P.L., MD Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.