Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead

By L. Ron Hubbard

Action packed and captivating tale. Captain Gordon is a Tomb Raider. Hired to fly a team of American anthropologists to an arid mountain region now part of Pakistan bordering the Arabian Sea. All goes well until an ancient map is discovered in an old pottery jar, revealing the site of a vast lost treasure that Alexander the Great was bringing to Greece from his conquest of India. More than 10,000 of Alexander's soldiers and camp followers lay buried in the high desert plains along with the loot of India - hidden in a tomb never to be reclaimed. With the map's discovery, all academic pretense is dropped. Now Gordon finds himself caught in the middle of the expedition where murder replaces scholarship as the best method to uncover the valuable hoard. His colleagues have one goal now, to raid a tomb belonging to Alexander the Great at all cost.

Not only was Hubbard steeped in the history of the ancient world, he was also an avid adventurer—both in his own right and as a respected member of the famed Explorers Club. As such, he brought a wealth of insight, experience and authenticity to all his tales of adventure.

Also includes two additional adventures: The Price of a Hat, in which the key to the Russian Czar’s life is hidden in a most unexpected place, and Starch and Stripes, the story of a U.S. Marine who sets a trap for a tropical warlord that reverberates all the way back to Washington.

“An exciting story told at a brisk clip, with characters and dialogue that keep readers glued to the page: Hubbard at his best.” —Booklist

* An International Book Awards Winner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Galaxy Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781592126224

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.

Book preview

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

TitlePgArt.jpg

Published by

Galaxy Press, LLC

7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

Hollywood, CA 90028

© 2008 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.

Cover art and Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead and ™ Price of a Hat story illustrations: © 1935 Metropolitan Magazines, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media. Starch and Stripes story illustration from Dime Adventure is © 1935 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations:Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59212-662-4 ePub version

ISBN 978-1-59212-335-3 print version

ISBN 978-1-59212-323-0 audiobook version

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903527

Contents

FOREWORD

TOMB OF THE

TEN THOUSAND DEAD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

PRICE OF A HAT

STRARCH AND STRIPES

STORY PREVIEW:

HURRICANE

GLOSSARY

L. RON HUBBARD

IN THE GOLDEN AGE

OF PULP FICTION

THE STORIES FROM THE

GOLDEN AGE

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

Reviews for Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead

[jclark88_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Love him or hate him, it's impossible to deny that L. Ron Hubbard was a master of pulp fiction. Galaxy Press has put together a new collection of Hubbard's pulp fiction short stories and the volumes are absolutely beautiful. I love the artwork and design of the book. It's obviously well thought out and designed.This particular volume contains three short stories and it won't take you long to breeze through all three. These stories are entertaining fluff for the most part but they do have a sort of magical quality about them that transports you back in time and helps you remember what it was like to read action adventure stories as a child.I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford the entire collection but I think these books are definitely worth having in my library.

[abealy_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Galaxy Press is bringing out the complete pulp fiction of L. Ron Hubbard in 80 handsomely designed volumes of three or four stories each for about ten bucks a volume. A preface and an afterword mythologizing the life of Hubbard in bombastic prose should probably also be viewed as a work of fiction. If HRH did half the feats attributed to him in this introduction — and he didn’t — he would be a legitimate candidate for sainthood! Oh wait…Galaxy Press is owned by the Church of Scientology so that’s probably exactly what they are attempting to do! Although his real life story is nothing like the swashbuckling hagiography portrayed here — in fact he seems to have been a narrow-minded racist when he was young and travelling with his parents through China and the Philippines — he did have a talent for storytelling and appears to have mined that talent across a wide spectrum of genres within what we now call pulp fiction. At a penny a word in the early days, the more you could write, under various pseudonyms and across genres, the more you could make. It is important to remember where these tales were published and for what audience. Every month throughout the 30’s and 40’s newsstands were papered with monthly magazines of adventure, fantasy, mystery, science fiction and romance. Hundreds of these rags vied for the attention of an audience looking for a good yarn to bring a little bit of exotic wonder into their lives. The stories included in Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead are good examples of that milieu. The title story is set in Baluchistan at the edge of the Iranian plateau in Pakistan. The story is a treasure hunt for the abandoned wealth of Alexander the Great as he retreated across the Makran desert with a doomed army of thousands. Our hero, Captain Charles Gordon, is a two-fisted man’s man who is the pilot on this expedition headed by a couple of British scientist-explorers. Also along for the ride is Kehlar, a Dehwar guide who Hubbard describes as “a strong brute, light fingered and greasy” — typical 30’s xenophobia. There is murder, treachery, dust storms, murder, more treachery, more murder, and so forth. Actually, if I slow down my 21st century brain and insert myself into the time it was written, it’s a pretty good half hour read. Just don’t set your sites too high. The second story, Price of a Hat, set during the fall of the Tsarist Empire and the beginnings of Soviet Russia is an interesting concept and not a half-bad read. Our hero is an American spy embedded in Siberia who, through a series of chance encounters has, for a moment at least, an opportunity to change the course of 20th century history. At 14 pages the story is practically over before it begins. The third story, Starch and Stripes is set in Cap-Haitien, Haiti in a USMC camp and features (of course) an American hero name Eddie Edwards, a rough at the edges marine captain who single-handedly takes on a sadistic bandit General when he should be polishing his boots and marching on the parade grounds. Again, a fun, quick read but nothing brilliant. In spite of having a Forward, a Glossary and an Afterword, there is no information about when these stories were written or where they were published. Stretching the series to eighty volumes just seems to be an exercise in greed. Handsome as they are, it would have been nicer to see the work in 12 or 15 volumes with a greater range of stories in each volume. That however may not serve the purposes of the Church.

[altarasabine · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book contains three reprinted stories by 1930's-1940's pulp fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. The stories contain the elements popular to the genre; treachery, murder, greed, etc. The stories are short and for the most part seem to just get going when they come to an end. However one must keep in mind that the stories were originally written to be in magazines for the day, requiring the length to be fairly short. A good portion of the book is taken up by a forward, glossary and afterward. The space would of been much better suited for more of the author's stories. All in all it is an fairly entertaining quick read.

[hredwards · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Years ago I read Battlefield Earth and really liked it. I didn't know much about Hubbard at that time.I like the pulp style stories so thought I would give this a try. I enjoyed it some what. It seemed rather than stories these were outlines that really could do with some fleshing out, especially the title tale.But that may be part of the genre. We're given three stories and a preview of another. I had to wonder about that, the stories aren't that long so how much of a preview can we expect?There was a glossary of terms which I found interesting. Then a chapter about L. Ron himself which was laughable. Made him sound like the stories were all taken from his real life. I had read some things about him on the internet recently including the true story of his life and what a fraud he was.Also could have done without the sales pitches all over the place to join the L. Ron book club. More money for the Scientologists I guess.Enjoyed the stories, but glad I didn't pay for this book.

[cameronl_51 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

L. Ron Hubbard was a prolific author of fiction during the golden age of the pulp magazines, cranking out story after story in any of the action-packed genres. This book is one of 80! that are being published to bring many of these stories back into print.This volume contains three stories. The title story takes place in India, and is about a search for a legendary treasure. It is just the kind of pulp action that 'Indiana Jones' was modeled after. The other two stories were equally thrilling. They come out swinging, and don't let up until the very end.High literature this ain't. It's fast, fun, and ultimately forgettable stuff. Great mindless summer reading. In fact, I read this at the beach!

[lisamorr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fun book! This issue of Stories from the Golden Age included the stories Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead, Price of a Hat and Starch and Stripes. I whipped threw these three stories very quickly and definitely enjoyed them. They were very well-written and entertaining. Pulp fiction at its best!

[laurion_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book contains three Hubbard stories of pulp fiction, and is designed to give you a taste. The publisher is starting a subscription series, every month putting out new books with more pulp stories. Fascinating to see such a subscription system being tried out again, as I thought it had died. that said, the three stories in this book are excellent examples of the pulp genre. Typically in the first paragraph or two you are immediately launched into the action with little or no backstory. Relevant details are dribbled between the lines as needed to back up the story in progress. It's no wonder these stories were so popular in the day. They're popcorn - light, easy reading, with no commitment and no investment. In a magazine, you could almost pick it up at the newsstand and read it before putting the magazine back down. Hubbard mastered the art of opening a portal between the reader and a scene with an immediacy that even television often fails to capture. The current media appetites are for longer storylines and recurring tensions, but you could do a lot worse than to spend an afternoon reading some words from a master of his art.

[cwflatt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love these reprints of L.Ron Hubbard's pulp fiction short stories. This is the third book I have read. They are great fun action packed short stories to take you away from your stress. As soon as you start any of the stories you are on an roller coaster ride of adventure, suspense, romance and intrigue. They are very simple and cheesy stories but that is what makes them fun.

[tankman14 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was very entertaining. I understand why people were drawn to these stories. The stories were gripping and exciting I could not put them down. I would definetly read more of these books.

[tpmcnulty · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the pantheon of pulp writers one of my favorites is L. Ron Hubbard. His stories are all action-packed, intelligently written and marvelous entertainments. "Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead" is a 1936 gem that offers up tons of excitement. And remember, this archeological adventure pre-dates Indiana Jones by thirty-five years. Captain Charles Gordon literally has his hands full with an ancient map that leads him to a stunning Alexandrian treasure. Keeping the treasure and getting out of the desert alive will take more than luck for our plucky hero. Trapped in the tomb with thousands of mummified corpses deep beneath the sands, besieged by fear and pursued by some unscrupulous treasure hunters, Hubbard's "Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead" has become one of my favorites from the early part of his career. Hubbard's gripping, breathless tales are memorable stories for young and old adventure fans alike. The bonus stories included are "The Price of a Hat" and Starch and Stripes." I also recommend the audio-book version for a superb multicast performance with music and sound effects in the style of old time radio dramas. Fantastic!