"L Ron Hubbard & Dave Wolverton- A Very Special Trip" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hubbard L. Ron)

The story Ron originally conceived, A Very Strange Trip, became a full-length L. Ron
Hubbard screenplay, replete with detailed directorial notes, character sketches and more. What I
initially found most intriguing, however, was the fact that the story concerned the time-traveling
adventures of a young West Virginian moonshiner, who inadvertently finds himself purchasing
Native American squaws.
It just so happens my grandfather was also a moonshiner from West Virginia, and likewise
purchased a half-Cherokee wife, my grandmother. It was all strictly illegal, but grandpa never
worried too much about legalities. Moreover, it was all part and parcel of my grandmother's
cultural heritage, as her mother had similarly been sold to her father and so on .
from time immemorial.
To some degree, then, writing this book gave me an opportunity to rediscover my personal
heritage. Then, too, I had long dreamed of studying paleobiology, and here was an opportunity to
delve rather deeply into the realms of mammoths and dinosaurs. Finally, I had wanted to try my
hand at writing comedy, a rare element in science fiction.
But there was another aspect to L. Ron Hubbard's A Very Strange Trip that immediately
intrigued me, and therein lies something of the L. Ron Hubbard legend.
In the name of research, I eventually traveled to the Cahokia Mounds where the Mississippi
and Missouri Rivers meet-once home to the temples of the priest-rulers of the Mississippian
culture. And what did I inevitably discover? In one sense or another, Ron, too, had made that trek
and, I might add, researched these matters to the bone. In point of fact, I found no aspect of
ancient life in these lands that Ron did not examine-from a study of Mississippian vegetation to
the Mayan pottery industry.
Yet remembering that a screenplay is not a book, and the art of adapting a tale from one
medium to another often requires some innovation, let me add one final word of introduction.
Because scripted comedy does not always play on paper, I could not always translate, so to speak,
Ron's story word for word. By the same token, however, a novel allows one to read a character's
thoughts, and so I afforded myself a degree of literary latitude in just that sense-interpreting the
thoughts of Ron's characters.
I hope the result is as fun for you to read as it was for Ron and me to write.




Dave Wolverton
 CHAPTER I


тАЬThe prisoner will now rise for sentencing," the bailiff of the Upshaw County
Superior Court intoned with a solemn expression, stopping in mid-chaw to hold a wad of tobacco
in the side of his mouth.
Nineteen-year-old Everett Dumphee stood and smoothed back a lick of his blond hair. He
was big and strong-boned. He quietly made sure his flannel shirt was tucked into his new pair of
Wrangler jeans, and stared at the judge with a heart brimful of dread.
Beside Dumphee, his girl, Jo Beth, sat quietly and held his hand. Everett's ma and pappy,
and uncles and cousins were all packed into the courthouse. The benches could not have held
more of them. Even the old preacher who lived in the cave up by Blue Grouse Creek had come
down for the court appearance.
Judge Wright was middle aged, slightly chubby, and he was staring hard at Everett with a
mean look in his eye, like a hound that's holed himself a 'coon. Judge Wright glared a minute,
then said, "Everett Dumphee, you've been found guilty of runnin' moonshine. Before I sentence