Trouble on His Wings

By L. Ron Hubbard

Flying into action, daredevil photojournalist Johnny Brice is always looking for trouble . . . and more often than not, finding it. But he doesn’t know what real trouble is until he rescues the beautiful woman he calls Jinx from a sinking ship. Like Bogie and Bacall, they’re made for each other—even if they are a dangerous mix.

Get the picture? Well, Johnny always does. The problem is, with Jinx now in the picture, all his photo-scoops are going down the drain—losing his film to water, fire or war. And it all comes to a head on assignment in China, when the Japanese shoot his plane down and take Jinx and Johnny prisoner.

Their lives at risk, it’s time for Johnny to get the real story about the lady. Is she really a jinx . . . or something even more sinister? In an adventure full of surprising discoveries, getting at the truth leads to the most shocking twist of all.

L. Ron Hubbard had first-hand experience of flying high with Trouble on His Wings. As a young aviator, he loved to tempt danger. One journalist wrote: “The flaming-haired pilot hit the city like a tornado a few years ago. . . . He just dared the ground to come up and hit him.” The knowledge and insight he gained during those flights is clearly evident in his aerial adventure stories.

“Very dramatic, colorful locales, fascinating characters, with fascinating histories.” —Tim Powers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Galaxy Press
• Release date: Mar 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781592126279

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

© 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. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. Story Preview illustration: Argosy Magazine is © 1936 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-59212-627-9 ePub version

ISBN 978-1-59212-336-0 print version

ISBN 978-1-59212-308-7 audiobook version

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903534

Contents

FOREWORD

TROUBLE ON HIS WINGS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

STORY PREVIEW:

THE BATTLING PILOT

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 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!

Trouble on His Wings

Chapter One

JOHNNY BRICE lounged in the shade of the hangar, eyes half-shut, cigarette smoldering, forgotten in his fingers, thinking about absolutely nothing. He should have known better. Every

Reviews for Trouble on His Wings

[antmusic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent production and acting make for a fun listen. Questionable content for younger listeners. Content is not edited for current political correctness, so overly sensative listeners may balk. No Scientology within.

[dokfintong · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have received several of these Hubbard audio books from librarything.com. "Jinx" is what ace reporter and airman Johnny Brice dubs the nameless young woman who seems to be causing all his troubles. Since he plucked her out of the sea he has lost every set of news photos he has shot - and they were some of the best of his career.From a burned intercontinental passenger liner, to a raging forest fire, to a diplomatic incident between China and Japan, Johnny and his associate "Irish" follow the news and take the photos. Then a jinx, or maybe THE Jinx appears and they lose their photos, their cameras, the company plane, and their jobs. The fact that Jinx is a beautiful blond makes it all the worse. And who is she anyway? Who is chasing her?All questions are answered in the end and love triumphs, as it should in pulp fiction.The story is preposterous but very very exciting. The multicast performance is excellent. The sound effects are wonderful. My copy of the CD did not seem to have the problems reported by other reviewers.We can imagine that Galaxy Press, publishers of these audiobooks, is a Scientologist outfit, but there is nothing that points directly to a link.You need to save the cast list that comes in the mailer because there seems to be no other list online or in the main packaging of these Galaxy Press audio books.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This audio edition of Trouble on His Wings was actually a lot of fun. Unlike a typical audio book, it is performed like a radio drama which works excellently with this 1939 adventure story of a new photographer who will do whatever it takes to get the scoop...and the jinx he picks up along the way. If you are looking for an exciting blast from the past, this is definitely it.

[jackmo77 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

L. Ron Hubbard was the master of the pulps. But when I read the blurb on the back of the audiobook, I had my doubts that Trouble On His Wings , a story about a guy who worked for the news reels, was going to be entertaining. I was wrong - it was a first-rate pulp story full of action. The book is about a “picture chaser” who covers disasters for a news-reel company. But after he pulls a beautiful blonde out of the ocean while cover an ocean liner disaster, his luck turns bad. Could it be the blonde, who he calls “Jinx,” that is causing his bad luck? And what about her mysterious past? It’s a riveting pulp novel that lovers of that genre will enjoy.The audio version is professionally done with great voice work done by a cast of actors.

[anothersheart · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received several L. Ron Hubbard's stories on CD from the Early Reviewers and have to admit I had never heard or read any of his works before. My family and I listened to the audio books in the car while traveling and I have to say we were pleasantly surprised at the entertainment value. The sound effects and voice variations were engaging and the pulp fiction stories helped the time pass quickly. My teenage daughter loved the historical value and happy endings while my boys stayed interested due to the action scenes and the characters. All-in-all, we were a very happy family and my husband and I found these readings opened several conversations with the kids we might not have had otherwise, especially talking about old radio shows and families gathering to listen-in on a weekly basis! We are passing these along to my sister-in-law and her family to enjoy during their travels as well. The audio books have more than earned the 4 star rating from us. The paperback books, on-the-other hand get a mere 3 stars as they were not as entertaining as the adventurous readings.My rating system is as follows:5 stars - Excellent, Worth Every Penny, Made It Into My Personal Library!4 stars - Great book, but not a classic. Passing on for others as a must read & encourage to review. 3 stars - Good overall, generally well written with few errors. Passing on to community library for others to enjoy.2 stars - Would not recommend based on personal criteria, too many typo's, lack of character development, or simply unreliable story-line for me.1 star - Difficult to read, hard to finish, or didn't finish. Wouldn't recommend purchasing or reading.In accordance with the FTC Guidelines for blogging and endorsements, you should assume that every book I review was provided to me by the publisher, media group or the author for free and no financial payments were received, unless specified otherwise.

[enemyanniemae · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of many short stories that the author put out in pulp magazines back in the 30s and 40s. I found the 'multi-cast' production to be distracting. It was meant to sound like an old radio show but some of the voices bordered on the ridiculous. It was OK but nothing to write home about.

[drled_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reviewed for LibraryThing as an early reviewer.Story synopsis: A passenger ship has burned to the water line, a forest fire has caused their plane to crash, the Chinese Ambassador almost dies at the hand of the Japanese, and Johnny Brice, video-photographer for a news outlet, misses all of his shots because, he thinks, of a young woman he’s named Jinx.Review: Trouble on His Wings, set in New York and China is intriguing. Many of the chapters are cliff-hangers, keeping the listener’s attention through the very quickly passing two hours. The actors do an excellent job with multiple parts and the sound effects are very well done. Until very near the end, the listener does not know the fate of Jinx until very near the end of the second CD. Unfortunately, both CDs have glitches; CD1 has an issue on Track 10 and CD2 has one on Track 1.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is the fourth audio book that I have listened to of L. Ron Hubbard. This was my least favorite. I did not really like the main character. He was too rude although brave but perhaps fool hardy. The story was somewhat odd. He has other stories that are more entertaining. I suggest that you listen to one of them.

[jmourgos · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Trouble On His Wings


Reprints of LRH pulps continue with this gem from the 1930s before the USA got into WWII. Johnny and Irish are the best of the best when it comes to news cameramen for World News. The stereotypical publicity hound boss, the crazy sidekick and the newsman who can do no wrong is plastered all over this tale.

When word of a disaster taking place on a ship in the Atlantic hits, Johnny is on a plane and bound to get some pictures for the newsreels (remember those, kiddies?). Through some pretty farfetched plotting (it is a pulp after all) he gets a girl. A girl who is a mystery, who says it’s best if Johnny does not know her; it’s best if he is careful and it could mean the death of him if he finds out who she really is.

The story really pulls no punches as Johnny runs into more and more bad luck as he drags this gal and Irish across the country. Losing film, wet cameras, burning forest fires and the Japanese Imperial Fleet have nothing on Johnny’s ability to bring the news that’s fit to watch.

Fast paced, silly at times, and a surprise ending to a short story tale. Nice way to knock off an hour or so.

Recommended.

[tpmcnulty · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this exciting pulp classic from 1939, Johnny Brice is working as a flyer and photographer for World News publications. He's a typical brash young man, intent on making a dollar and willing to take chances. Constantly putting himself at risk is second nature to him. Determined to get the first newsreel footage of disasters as they happen, he goes so far as to parachute into the ocean in order to get picked up by a rescue ship on its way to save the survivors of a burning vessel. Then one day he inadvertently saves the life of a beautiful girl, and as you would expect from a piece of pulp fiction the plot heats up from there.Trouble On His Wings is one of many air-adventure stories penned by L. Ron Hubbard, himself a barnstorming pilot in his youth. This is one of his longer stories from the 30s and what a wonderful tale it is. Johnny Brice is identical to the male lead characters in Hubbard's best fiction; immediately likeable, handsome and resourceful. I'm particularly fond of Hubbard's air-adventure tales because his love of flying and adventure comes across in the writing. His characters speak to the joy of flight and the grand sweep of landscape below them: "She watched the country unroll below them, small ripples of pleasure going through her at the variety of colors of the checkerboard earth, of the dollhouse towns, always with their guardian church spires..." Such strong writing makes reading Trouble On His Wings all the more pleasurable. You can see and feel the action of the story.And what would a great pulp fiction story be without a little romance? Trouble On His Wings is flavored with a blossoming romance as Brice takes note of his beautiful rescued passenger as they fly across the country: "Her honey-gold hair was delightfully real." But naturally their fate is undecided as Brice begins to think the girl, who refuses to tell him her name, has jinxed him. His best efforts at getting newsreel footage are crushed time and again with a string of incredible bad luck. The girl may be beautiful, but he can't shake either her or the trouble that keeps coming his way. Written in eleven thrilling chapters Trouble On His Wings is a robust and heartfelt adventure. The plot takes a few turns and twists that will keep readers guessing as they whip through the pages.This was such a fun book to read. I was swept along myself on this cross-country thrill ride. Readers will be rooting for Johnny Brice and "Jinx" to not only work out their problems, but survive the inexplicable poor fortune that plagues Johnny at every turn. What you get with every story by L. Ron Hubbard is a dedication to the characters, the plot and a devotion to the readers who are expecting the best, and then receiving the best. Books like Trouble On His Wings can be enjoyed again and again along with the entire 80 volume series.

[pixiedark · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 I received "Trouble on His Wings" through Library Thing Early Reviewers. Trouble on his Wings by L. Ron Hubbard is about Johnny Brice a hard working "picture chaser" for the newsreels. He loves to fly into the mouth of danger and get the story first, shoot it and send the film back fast so it can be turned into newsreels for theaters across America.He is the best there ever was as a "top dog" reporter; up until the day he inadvertently saves the life of girl he pulls out of the ocean while covering a ship burning at sea. The dame, or "Jinx" as Brice calls her, seems to bring bad luck. She keeps Brice on his toes and waist deep in trouble. No matter how hard he tries or how good the story is, Johnny can't seem to get good shots or shake the girl.Trouble on His Wings has many twists and turns that keeps you guessing. The sound effects are amazing, you feel like you are in the sky riding in the airplane. This story has a surprise ending that reveals who "Jinx" really is.