Fear

By R. L. Saunders

FEAR is outstanding psychological science fiction. 

As the author says: "There is one thing which I wish the reader
could keep in mind throughout, and that is: this story is wholly
logical, for all that will appear to the contrary. It is not a very
nice story, nor should it be read alone at midnight— for it is true
that any man might have the following happen to him.

 Even you, today,
might lose four hours from your life and follow, then, in the course
of James Lowry." For hours—and a hat —were missing from
James Lowry's life. If he didn't find them, he'd go mad. And if he
did, he'd die!

With recently discovered final chapter, uncovered from the author's research papers.

This edition based on "Fear", Galaxy Science Fiction Novels Number 29, 1954. Published by Galaxy Publishing Company, 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, New York. Written by Horace Hackett under the pen-name of "L. Ron Hubbard." Copyright was issued in 1940, but no registration or renewal was recorded, this work is Public Domain under Rule 6 of the Copyright Statutes of the United States. 

Cover and added text copyright Midwest Journal Press.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Midwest Journal Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2018

Book preview

FEAR

Redux: New Alternate Ending Recovered

by R. L. Saunders

Including the pulp fiction classic Fear by Horace Hackett,

(aka L. R. Hubbard) with new Preface by W. R. Colt, and newly discovered ending by Horace Hackett.

This edition based on the Galaxy Science Fiction Novel Number 29, 1954. Copyright was issued in 1940, but no registration or renewal was recorded, this work is Public Domain under Rule 6 of the Copyright Statutes of the United States.

(See https://archive.org/details/galaxynovels&tab=about )

Cover and added text for this edition copyright © 2017 Midwest Journal Press. All Rights Reserved.

Table of Contents

FORWARD - HOW THIS NEW ENDING WAS RECOVERED

I. The Mysterious Origin of A Pulp Fiction Classic

II. Additional Research Deepens the Mystery

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

REVIEWS

BONUS

FORWARD - HOW THIS NEW ENDING WAS RECOVERED

by W. R. Colt, Researcher and Author

I. The Mysterious Origin of A Pulp Fiction Classic

This is a chance to reveal and solve the mystery of how this book came about, and how the missing ending was found.

It started as innocent research in the archives of the State Library at Helena Montana. A certain dry, hot, and tedious summer. I was on a vacation, actually. Visiting rather boring relatives, and seeking relief from their continuing and empty conversations. This led me to leave their house in the suburbs on an excursion to research something to write about. What better place than a huge state library.

Taking some time to compliment (and admire) the young librarian at their reception, her pretty blond head was quickly nodding with mine about finding old versions of the pulp magazines. Her dreamy blue eyes became even more misted as I told her of the adventures of researching and writing the classic pulps. She was a fan of old fiction, particularly romantic fiction during that era. She loved writing and adored the time when short story writers could become published overnight. And while she of course, shouldn't give me access to their archives, she did anyway. Since I was a published author and was writing a story about Helena and its publishing history. Of course, I also got her name and number in case I needed to do more interviews or research. (She also included her personal number, which was very nice of her.)

Shortly, I had navigated her handwritten directions down into the depth of their file storage maze and was  breathing the humidity-controlled, and dustless rows of file cabinets that housed their collections. Florescent lighting gave everything an eerie blue-white cast, reflecting off the tiled floors which were also a light shade of blue. This in turn gave the file cabinets an aspect of almost floating, if you squinted and held your head just right...

I was interested in the early pulps, those books before, during and just after the 1st World War. Fortunately, these had been well kept in their comic book plastic sleeves. With my required archival gloves, I was able to delve in and read the actual stories. One stood out among the racks of brown and tan magazines. It was a bit taller and thicker than the others.

When I pulled it out, the plastic almost came off in my hands, as it had required a larger size than normal, much as if someone had put it into a freezer bag instead of the required standard archival sleeve. The reason for this bulk became obvious - there was a second set of papers inside the magazine. All loose and hand-typed, not printed and bound.

These loose papers were an original story, submitted to various magazines. A small checklist was clipped to the title sheet, listing Argosy, Adventure, Astounding, The Popular Magazine, and a few others. All had been crossed off except the last - Unknown. This story was in the middle of one of that magazine's editions.

The authors byline was on the front page - Horace Hackett. That name rang a bell. But a faint one. The story was one that seemed familiar to me, but this was a episode that seemed different. It had been stuffed into a vintage 1940 edition of Unknown magazine. In that magazine was the full published story. This was something in addition to it.

But a noise on the stairs interrupted my research. I had to study more, but I was out of time. The library would be closing in an hour. And the magazine was not in the lending area. Research Only, the sign said. I didn't know if I could get more time at the library, or even special access again. I couldn't take the original out of their secured archives.

They did have a photocopy machine. I noticed it on the by the stairs on my way in. The long and the short of it was that the papers made their way with me, and let me transport them to the outside world again. The library had their magazine and original papers, I had a rare copy of an unapproved submission from a long-dead author that I could study at leisure.

I paid for my photocopies at the desk to the alluring young librarian with the dreamy eyes.

Soon I was at my relative's house again, secluded from their noisy talking, off into a corner easy chair. Pad and pen in hand, taking notes. A tablet was nearby for online research, where I found the original story in the public domain and downloaded it. Comparing the xeroxed typed pages showed that it took up after the story left the reader hanging.

What was very curious was the last page. It was evidently carefully cut from a bound journal. While the date was smudged beyond deciphering, it told a story about a young kid named Brick Hubbard, who would come out infrequently to his grandfather's place outside Helena. Horace was living in the barn out there, in exchange for caring for the cow (milking her twice daily) and grooming a few horses, as well as keeping their tack dry and cared for. He was also employed in repairing the fences. Any spare time, he spent typing his stories and cycling into town to post them as submissions.

Brick had found Horace one day as he wandered away from the rest of his visiting family, who had decided to take a picnic there. His dad was off in the Navy and would be sending for the rest of his family to his next duty station. Brick was both interested and disinterested about leaving Helena and it's urban/rural entertainments. While he had the silent movies to attend, and his grandpa's horses to ride, he was most interested in Horace's typewriter. Brick love to tell tall stories, and merged the truth and reality with a smoothness Horace hadn't seen in any but published writers. Brick wanted to learn how to type, but as a 9-year-old, had no patience. He barely waited until Horace had cranked out a page before snatching it to read the story. What he could, anyway. Horace frequently had to stop and tell him what a word meant, and explained how it was used.

Horace had a crate he would type on, a bucket to sit on, and a small trunk he kept his supplies in. When Brick would visit, he'd bring out another crate with a flat top. This was for Brick's handwritten stories. Often Horace had one version of the story and Brick had another. It was hard to tell who came up with the idea first. Although the plots were similar, the details were changed.

The entry ended abruptly. It had been xeroxed with the others at loose sheets fit into the feeder. I hadn't noticed it until finishing off the rest of the story.

And there was this quote in the margin, Good writers copy, great writer's steal. (Wilde?)

II. Additional Research Deepens the Mystery

While there was no other mention of Brick or his grandfather in those papers, some cross-referencing at the State Library (which gave me another talk with the dreamy-eyed librarian) showed it might have been a Lafayette R. Hubbard whose name-sake grandfather (Lafayette Lafe O. Waterbury) owned some land outside of town. The name L. R. Hubbard was associated with various pen names across different genres and especially science fiction during the pulp fiction golden days. While uncommon, it isn't impossible for an author to use another's as a pen-name, as long as the checks came through to the right one. The problem is that with the changing copyright laws during the 60's,  the other author, if they actually existed, could feasibly renew your copyright under their name and address, then claim the residuals of republishing them.

Fear was published under the Hubbard pen-name in the 1940 Galaxy Novel Number 19. It had also been published in other magazines.

Of additional interest, another book published under the Hubbard pen-name featured Horace Hackett as a character in his only other well-known novel from that career, Typewriter in the Sky.

While record of three other books were officially copyrighted in 1961 by a W. Horace Hackett, I wasn't able to find any reference to a Horace Hackett in Montana. This isn't to say that Hackett couldn't have published under Hubbard pen-name or others.

(As a character, Horace Hackett also appeared in a Frank Forrest story, Al, the Athlete around July 1916. Printed in Happy Days, a weekly pulp publication out of New York. Probably a coincidence.)

But there my research ended. Some authors contend that Hackett was instead an invention of Hubbard, being a play on the phrase hack writer, which comes from hackneyed, an overworked trope. Certainly Hubbard's top two works met this criteria. Fear was reviewed as being completely compiled from horror tropes, but no one before or since compiled this many tropes inside a single story. Typewriter in the Sky is noted as having at least 12 common tropes according to Tvtropes.org (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TypewriterInTheSky)

Between the two of these stories, you get a view of what Hubbard thought of pulp fiction writers, the craft, and his readers.

Even if Hackett did write the story originally, it was his Hubbard alter-ego got the credit for it. The only sketchy proof we have is this mysterious original locked away in Montana State Library Archives. If it still exists today. The actual Hubbard since entrenched his own personal life in mystery with his own regularly re-fabricated back trail. Several accounts exist for every fact recorded. Future histories may determine Hubbard himself to be an urban legend, as history is continually re-written, but that is not ours to decide. There was an Aesop, there was a Lao Tse, but whether they actually wrote the books attributed to them cannot be proved.

Unfortunately, these xeroxes, along with many other personal papers were lost during one of the many hurricanes that ravage the East Coast periodically. Verifying the existence of either Brick or Horace would be near impossible at this point.

It was a fascinating adventure. I'm only happy to bring this final chapter to life again, as a tribute to all the pulp fiction authors out there. Both known and unknown, both real and imagined.

W. R. Colt

CHAPTER ONE

LURKING, that lovely spring day, in the office of Dr. Chalmers, Atworthy College Medical Clinic, there might have been two small spirits of the air, pressed back into the dark shadow behind the door, avoiding as far as possible the warm sunlight which fell gently upon the rug.

Professor Lowry, buttoning his shirt said, So I am good for another year, am I?

'Tor another thirty-eight years, smiled Dr. Chalmers. A fellow with a rugged build like yours doesn't have to worry much about a thing like malaria. Not even the best variety of bug Yucatan could offer. You'll have a few chills, of course, but nothing to w r orry about. By the way, when are you going back to Mexico?"

If I go when my wife gives me leave, that'll be never.

And if I had a woman as lovely as your wife Mary, said Chalmers, Yucatan could go give its malaria to somebody else. Oh, well—and he tried to make himself believe he was not, after all, envious of Atworthy's wandering ethnologist— I never could see what you fellows saw in strange lands and places.

Facts, said Lowry.

Yes, I suppose. Facts about primitive sacrifice and demons and devils— Say, by the way, that was a very nice article you had in the Newspaper Weekly last Sunday.

The door moved slightly,