Beyond All Weapons
4/5
()
About this ebook
Han Solo of Star Wars could learn a thing or two from Firsten Guide, the tough, wise-cracking rebel leader who’s light years ahead of his time—and about to lead his crew into a battle that’s Beyond All Weapons. Because the force is most assuredly with Firsten.
He and his fellow colonizers of Mars have faced a brutal crackdown engineered by Earth’s tyrannical government. But the resourceful Firsten has developed an extraordinary new fuel that enables him and his hardy band to escape into space—and time.
Escape, however, is not enough. Firsten wants revenge. But the universe is full of unexpected twists and turns. Just as Prometheus flew too close to the sun, Firsten will soon discover that when you break the laws of physics, you can get burned.
Hubbard was a pioneer in his use and development of Einstein’s theories of space and time as a plot point in his fiction. In Beyond All Weapons, he explains: “As mass approaches the speed of light … it approaches infinity. And, as mass approaches infinity, time approaches zero. It was only nine days back from Alpha. But in those nine days, six thousand years have passed by Earth.” It stands as one of the earliest—and most succinct—descriptions of the theory.
Also includes the science fiction adventures Strain, the story of a space war’s brutality and one man’s struggle to keep a secret under the pain of torture, and The Invaders, in which the distant crystal mines are under attack until a technician crystallizes a unique strategy to undermine the attackers.
“A thrilling space adventure … the terror and excitement builds through to the end.” —Publishers Weekly
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.
Read more from L. Ron Hubbard
Battlefield Earth: Science Fiction New York Times Best Seller Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Under the Black Ensign: A Pirate Adventure of Loot, Love and War on the Open Seas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Secret: An Intergalactic Tale of Madness, Obsession, and Startling Revelations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Beyond All Weapons
Related ebooks
The Falcon Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil—With Wings: An Epic Tale of Fighter Aircraft and British Spy-Craft in War-Torn China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gunman's Tally Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On Blazing Wings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Red Dragon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spy Killer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Forbidden Gold: An Adventure in Love and Money and the Desire for More Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrders is Orders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If I Were You Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lieutenant Takes the Sky Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iron Duke: A Novel of Rogues, Romance, and Royal Con Games in 1930s Europe Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inky Odds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Branded Outlaw: A Tale of Wild Hearts in the Wild West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Shadows Fall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Phantom Patrol: The Story of a Coast Guard Officer, a Drug Runner, and a Sea of Trouble Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Man-Killers of the Air Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One Was Stubborn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fifty-Fifty O'Brien Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Green God Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Chee-Chalker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Military & War Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sci-Fi & Fantasy Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Battling Pilot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dive Bomber: A High-flying Adventure of Love and Danger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Headhunters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Action & Adventure Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYukon Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sea Fangs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Destiny's Drum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sabotage in the Sky: A Heated Rivalry, a Heated Romance, and High-flying Danger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Science Fiction For You
This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cryptonomicon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time and Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Light From Uncommon Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Beyond All Weapons
5 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The latest release from Galaxy Press is a real treat because it features three classic science fiction tales from the golden age. The title story, Beyond All Weapons, tells the tale of Firstin Guide, a tough rebel who leads a group of colonists off earth to escape the tyrannical government. What follows is a suspenseful and often grim tale of survival amidst the hope of one day returning to earth to rescue their families and destroy the Polar regime. Long time fans of Hubbard's work will recognize elements in the story similar to those found in his classic novel To the Stars. But Beyond All Weapons is still a wholly unique and thrilling story. I think if he hadn't written To the Stars then Beyond All Weapons might have been remembered as a classic of space travel after its appearance in the January 1950 issue of Super Science Stories. The second story, Strain, is a compelling and taut thriller that would have made a great episode on the old Outer Limits television show. A study of men under duress and holding dear to their patriotic duty, the ending was a surprise and initially seemed perfunctory. So I read the story again and savored it at a slower pace and I now realize how expertly Hubbard set up the plot. Strain is a classic. The final entry, The Invaders, offers a lighter tone, but still features some wonderful hard-boiled writing by Hubbard. Gedso Ion Brown, a technician from the Extra Territorial Scienticorps, has been sent to offer assistance in the alien attacks being suffered at the Crystal Mines. To say more would give away the twist ending. You'll just have to read it to find out what happens. All in all, these are three great stories from the glorious golden age of science fiction pulps!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well what a fine mess our hero, Firsten Guide, is in here.Earth people have colonized Mars but Earth lost its free government to off planet intruders, "snow devils." --"That strange race who had managed to adapt their metabolism to the blood-chilling climate of the North Pole."Firsten is of the Mars colonists from Earth who are getting their butts kicked by the Polar regime invaders on Earth.Earth has an electronic barrier which can't be penetrated, a force field, and the barrier of light speed travel has yet to be successfully accomplished.It looks pretty grim, morale is horrible for the humans who colonized Mars and have suffered many casualties. Firsten announces to his shipmates calmly, "I think they ought to be whipped."Fuel is needed and an attempt at the light barrier...A great story but I don't want to spoil the ending. :)
Book preview
Beyond All Weapons - 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
missing image filePublished by
Galaxy Press, LLC
7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200
Hollywood, CA 90028
© 2012 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.
Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations and Story Preview and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. When Shadows Fall cover art: © 1948 Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media.
ISBN 978-1-59212-487-9 ePub version
ISBN 978-1-59212-737-5 Kindle version
ISBN 978-1-59212-256-1 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-246-2 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928016
Contents
FOREWORD
BEYOND ALL WEAPONS
STRAIN
THE INVADERS
STORY PREVIEW:
WHEN SHADOWS FALL
L. RON HUBBARD
IN THE GOLDEN AGE
OF PULP FICTION
THE STORIES FROM THE
GOLDEN AGE
GLOSSARY
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!