Here’s the thing about books by L. Ron Hubbard: Scientology. I held it against him as a writer of pulp fiction, which I shouldn’t have done. I think it’s a con and didn’t want to do anything to publicize the con man. Then I thought, “So what if it’s a con? Hubbard was a damn good pulpster and he ought to get credit for that.” Then I thought, “Yeah, but dammit, it’s Scientology.” Then I thought, “Okay, but should I blame Hubbard because he created a belief system that in all honesty isn’t that much loonier than the respected ones? The fault isn’t in us, it’s in our stars. You know, Cruise, Travolta, that crowd. You can’t blame the chef if the pie-eaters overindulge.”

Hey, what happened? Sorry if I offended you. I entered the phrase “seekers of a higher truth” and “pie-eaters” came out. Damn faulty keyboard.

Then I thought, “Fuck it. You’re giving this stuff way too much thought.”

So I used a bookstore gift card to acquire some of the Hubbard reprints currently on the market. Galaxy Press — which, I believe, is owned by the Church of Scientology, or whatever it’s called — has begun a major reprint series. The intention is to bring back into print around 150 long and short stories by Hubbard in something like 80 volumes at $9.95 a pop. You do the math.

It hurts because most of the tales will be well worth reading, and if they were published in a standard-sized book — maybe four or five novellas in a volume — at $20, I’d be all over them.
The first one of the short volumes from Galaxy I picked up is IF I WERE YOU, a fantasy story from the February 1940 issue of FIVE-NOVELS MONTHLY. In it, protagonist Little Tom Little, a circus dwarf, discovers from a book of occult hoohah that if he stares intently at someone and thinks about it real hard, he can transfer his soul/essence/consciousness into the other person, and the other person’s will move into Little’s body.

Every time Little makes the Big Switch, something goes wrong: He takes over the body of the circus manager just as the manager is discovered to be a thief. He moves on to the lion tamer and then discovers that he has no clue how to manage the big cats. Of course, it’s a happiness-found-in-your-own-backyard story, and what makes it fun are the clever comeuppances Little endures before he figures out the moral.

Hubbard’s sense of humor is also on full display, and not just in the basic plot which is, let’s face it, silly. He loads the yarn with as much circus jargon as he can — so much, in fact, his new publisher has supplied a glossary. How else could you translate a passage like this:

“Joe Middler was taking too much ‘strawberry shortcake.’ His shill wasn’t getting a long enough string of coconuts. The pup opera was minus its canine star, who had wandered too near a gravedigger’s cage and it was either a new mutt or a dead hyena.”

It goes on from there, but why be confusing?

The volume also contains a short story co-authored by Hubbard and L. Sprague de Camp. I read it a week ago and damned if I can remember now what it was about. No kidding. It’s a blank. Some story, huh?

IF I WERE YOU is amusing, but probably not 10 bucks’ worth of amusing. I bought two other volumes in this series, and I’ll report back on their value for the money.

Final word on L. Ron Hubbard as a writer of pulp fiction: He was good, and if your only objection to trying him out is the fact that he concocted a pulp-fiction religion as a means of making money — something he admitted — you might pick up one of these little books for a quick read. This is Hubbard at his least pretentious. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• SLAVES OF SLEEP by L. Ron Hubbard