Live Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s Science Fiction Short “Tough Old Man”

Live Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s Science Fiction Short “Tough Old Man”, originally uploaded by tadnkat.

This weekend, my wife and I attended another excellent performance of L. Ron Hubbard‘s Stories from the Golden Age at the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC.

Like the earlier performances I’ve written about, including LRH’s sci-fi short “Battling Bolto”, and the quite-entertaining performance of “One Was Stubborn”, the performance was a multicast audio reading of one of Mr. Hubbard’s stories from the 1930′s golden age of pulp fiction, and was done replete with lighting and audio effects to make it a rather immersive performance.    Author Services, the literary agent for Mr. Hubbard’s works, does a tour through the area once a year, and these performances are always a treat.

I’ve been listening to more and more of these stories lately, seeing as I have to take an 8-hour each-way road trip once per month for work, and audiobooks like these make an excellent trip companion.

If you want to get hold of this story itself, it’s one of the short stories in the book When Shadows Fall which you can get here.

Live Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s “Battling Bolto” at the Founding Church of Scientology Washington, D.C.

L. Ron Hubbard Stories from a Golden Age Reading of “Battling Bolto”, originally uploaded by tadnkat.

My wife and I (as well as my daughter) were treated to another good time at our church this weekend – this time care of an amazingly-professional performance of the L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi short-story entitled “Battling Bolto”.

Unfortunately, unlike last year’s live perfomance, I forgot to bring my DSLR, so the only photo I could take of it was from my lowly BlackBerry Curve.   But the performance itself, held in the chapel of the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C, was just as excellent.

Author Services has been working to release the full array of  L. Ron Hubbard’s short stories – both as illustrated books, but also as high-quality audiobooks.  It’s the audiobooks that I, personally, have been most fond of – as they’re all told by  not a single voice, but by multiple actors and replete with outstanding sound effects.   Before the performance, we were treated to a demonstration of what goes into making the audiobooks – the actors, the sound effects, the attempts to find sounds that can instantly communicate what’s happening without one having any visual to go along with it except what’s in your head.

And the story itself, “Battling Bolto” is one that one can now get as part of the L. Ron Hubbard paperback entitled When Shadows Fall.   The story is about a hulking man from another world, Bolto, who is duped into being whisked away by a traveling con man who travels from planet to planet selling his wares.

I already am a subscriber to these Golden Age Stories (i.e. I get a new one monthly when they come out) but seeing the performance in person is a real treat.

Live Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s Short: “One Was Stubborn”

Saturday night, we had the good fortune of having a tour come to town from Author Services – the organization that acts as the literary agent for L. Ron Hubbard’s works.   

In the Chapel of the Founding Church of Scientology, we got not only a briefing about what Author Services has been doing – what with the release of the incredible Stories From a Golden Age books & audiobooks, and the incomparable Writers of the Future Competition, but we also got treated to a live performance of the sci-fi short story entitled “One Was Stubborn” by L. Ron Hubbard.

 

As a first primer, in case you didn’t know, L. Ron Hubbard was one of the most prolific authors during the golden age of the pulps, an era during the 1930’s and 1940’s where instead of television, people turned to reading gripping short stories of all sorts as their common form of entertainment.

L. Ron Hubbard wrote in literally every genre – westerns, adventure, sci-fi, even romance.   This site has an excellent video presentation on such.

Author Services has recently released the full cache of L. Ron Hubbard’s short stories – both as quite excellent illustrated books, but also as high-quality audiobooks.  It’s the audiobooks that I, personally, have been most fond of – as they’re all told by  not a single voice, but by multiple actors and replete with outstanding sound effects.   You can get a sample of some of them, including the one we saw live. 

The story centers around a fellow named Old Shellback (above), who allegedly is the most stubborn old codger in the entire universe.  When a charismatic (yet slimy) religious leader dubbed “the Messiah” comes along to try to convince everyone that the world exists only by mutual agreement and calls for its end, objects start to disappear.

The story goes from there – one that I found quite entertaining, but even more so due to the excellent performance we were treated to.