A Very Strange Trip with L Ron Hubbard

In 1987 Dave Wolverton won the WRITERS OF THE FUTURE contest begun by L. Ron Hubbard for his story, On My Way to Paradise.  Some time after that, Hubbard's literary agency, Author Services, Inc., gave Wolverton the opportunity to "collaborate" with Hubbard on a novel.

Hubbard died in 1986 but left behind a number of writings that hadn't been published.  One of these was a full-length screenplay "replete with detailed directorial notes, character sketches and more..."  Wolverton took that screenplay and adapted it as a novel.

I haven't read any of Dave Wolverton's other work  - he writes science fiction under his own name and fantasy under the name David Farland.  I don't know his style. I don't know if he's a good writer or not - though he has won a number of awards.

But A Very Strange Trip reads like the rest of Hubbard's work.  The humor is flat and not humorous.  The characters are undeveloped stereotyped caricatures.  Their actions are wildly implausible and their motivations ludicrous.  As with other of Hubbard books, A Very Strange Trip seems like something written by a jr. high aged boy. It is juvenille.

The protagonist, Everette Dumphree, is given the task to drive a truck full of secret contraband Soviet equipment from Trenton, New Jersey to Denver, Colorado.  Included in this cache is a time machine that is set off with the slightest bump or jostle.

Dumphree finds himself thrown into the past.  There he purchases three indian squaws - Pretty Rose, Bear Tail, and Lotsa Smoke - who are, of course, very beautiful, quite buxom, and barely dressed.  The squaws speak "movie indian" english.

"Go town, now," Pretty Rose said.  "We here long time, we set up trade."

"I make heap strong rat root tea - it give vision plenty."

"We work plenty hard.  One cup firewater not much thanks," Pretty Rose pouted.

The four of them continue the trek towards Denver and experience a number of other cliched time-travelling adventures and the end is predictable enough - they all live happily ever after and have lots and lots of money and etc. etc. etc.

I wonder how free Wolverton was to adapt Hubbard's screenplay.  His career took off after winning the writing contest begun by Hubbard.  The book was suggested to him by Hubbard's literary agency and was published by Bridge Publications, Inc. which is the publishing arm of the Church of Scientology.  I would suspect that Wolverton didn't change much in adapting Hubbard's screenplay into this novel.