The Lieutenant Takes the Sky (Military & War Short Stories Collection) - Softcover

L. Ron Hubbard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592123228 ISBN 13: 9781592123223

Publisher: Galaxy Press, 2013

Synopsis

American pilot Mike Malloy has learned his lesson: when you join the French Foreign Legion, it’s best not to wipe the floor with two French officers . . . no matter how richly they deserve it. And it appears he has all the time in the world to think about it. He’s been sentenced to five years in a Moroccan penal battalion—which is French for death sentence.

But Malloy, who could easily pass for actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., is about to get a reprieve . . . if he’s willing to fly into the heart of the Sahara and into the teeth of a Berber rebellion.

It’s an offer Malloy can’t refuse. All he has to do is fly two passengers into the desert and return with a book that disappeared 800 years ago. But as he’s a man who doesn’t go by the book, this expedition could turn out to have unexpected benefits. One of his passengers is a young American woman whose eyes are as beautiful and blue as the wild blue yonder. . . .

Hubbard once said that writers too often “forget a great deal of the languorous quality which made the Arabian Nights so pleasing. Jewels, beautiful women, towering cities filled with mysterious shadows, sultans equally handy with robes of honor and the beheading sword . . . these things still exist, undimmed, losing no luster to the permeating Occidental flavor which reaches even the far corners of the earth today.” Hubbard brings this unique insight to his stories of North Africa and the Legionnaires, investing them with an authenticity of time, place and character that kept his readers asking for more.

About this title

About the Author:

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 325 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed 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.

From Publishers Weekly:

First published in 1938, this action-packed short novel epitomizes the thrills that readers sought out in pulp fiction magazines of the early 20th century. Rambunctious American pilot Mike Malloy, whose motto is Trouble tags me around like a hound dog, is festering in a French Foreign Legion brig for his latest act of insubordination when he's given the chance to redeem himself by flying a group of explorers into the Moroccan desert to retrieve a fabled lost alchemy text. By the story's end, he's fought dogfights with the rebel forces of Allal Fasei, parachuted from a gunned-down plane, avoided a firing squad, won the heart of sexy scholar Lois DuGanne, and single-handedly saved Morocco from the clutches of dictators. On page after page, the bullets fly, the planes streak, the banter ricochets like dialogue in a Howard Hawks movie, and Hubbard shows why so many readers sought escape in his pulp adventure tales. (Oct.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Galaxy Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1592123228
• ISBN 13: 9781592123223
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136