A Very Strange Trip [Hardcover]

L. Ron Hubbard (Author), Dave Wolverton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

Selected to transport the first prototype time machine to the Experimental Weapons Battalion in Denver, Colorado, driver Everett Dumphee gets sidetracked when the machine activates and sends him on the ultimate off-road adventure in early and prehistoric America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Everett Dumphee, the descendant of a venerable line of West Virginian moonshiners, joins the army to avoid prison, only to accidentally activate a time machine while transporting a truckload of experimental Russian weapons to Denver. He then tries to return to 1991, enduring several stopovers, including in the Ice Age, during the height of Mayan civilization and at a train station under Indian attack in 1870. Joining Dumphee at the latter are a cowardly lieutenant and four Indian "squaws" who display an incongruous facility with modern armaments. Attempts at humor come from two angles: poorly executed slapstick (an experimental weapon manifests a gigantic phantom of Joseph Stalin to terrorize Mayan warriors; a mis-aimed cannon destroys a henhouse) and anachronistic pop culture references to Star Trek, Star Wars and Rambo (a "squaw"'s cleavage is her "silicon valley"). Characterization isn't a strength, either: Dumphee's primary ethical qualms come from concern over the Indian women's gold lust, which is awakened by Mayan riches, and his cheap moralizing over whether to remain in the past as a god. Despite the fact that the late Hubbard (Battlefield Earth) gets top billing, Wolverton (Beyond the Gate) wrote this novel, based on an unpublished story by Hubbard. He's done much better on his ownAand so did Hubbard. Simultaneous audio; author tour. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This novelization by Wolverton of L. Ron Hubbard's unpublished screenplay is the late Hubbard's first published sf in almost ten years. The protagonist, the Appalachian-bred Everett Dumphee, joins the Army to avoid being sent to prison for unwittingly transporting moonshine. His skills earn him the assignment of driving a bumbling, inept lieutenant and a stolen Russian time machine to an Army research facility in Denver. The time machine is accidentally activated during the trip, and the two soldiers are transported to a variety of places, including a fort under attack by Indians in 1870, a Mayan city, and the Ice Age. Wolverton's story dredges up every imaginable clich? about Appalachia, the Army, and Native Americans. The novel and its recording have a campy, farcical quality and slapstick sense of humor that do not do justice to either Hubbard's or Wolverton's earlier works. The abridged multicast recording moves too quickly, and the odd country-rock music played at intervals grates on the reader's nerves almost as much as Dumphee's fake West Virginia accent. While the sound effects (e.g., rain, crowds, windshield wipers) and actor Jason Beghe's third-person narration are compelling, the voices of the remainder of the cast sound as though they are coming from the bottom of a particularly deep ocean located about 30 yards to the left of the microphone. Overall, the recording sounds like a bad old-fashioned radio production of a cheesy 1950s B movie. Not recommended.
-Leah Sparks, Bowie P.L., MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Bridge Pubns; First Edition edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573181641
• ISBN-13: 978-1573181648
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,756,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Junior High School SF, August 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Very Strange Trip (Hardcover)

This book is at the top of my list of the worst SF I have read in the last 10 years. If you like really simple SF then maybe it is for you. This proves my theory that whenever you see "Story By Someone" in big letters and then in little letters you see "Novel by Someone Else" it is a waste of time. I'm mad at my self for buying it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing: A Very Strange Trip, May 29, 2004

By 

J. Naft (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Very Strange Trip (Hardcover)

This book was very disappointing to me. I've always been a big fan of Wolverton's StarWars books and I never knew he wrote other types of stories. With Wolverton's name and an awesome cover, I couldn't resist buying this one. And the inside flap summary sounded interesting enough.

What I soon found out, though, was that that's ALL I had bought: a name and a cover. I think Wolverton did his best to salvage this story; after all, the plot flowed okay and was a fun, light read. I was through with this book in a single afternoon and it was easy enoguh to get through. However, I think Wolverton's talent as a writer could have better been spent on another Science Fiction piece of his own, not a rehashing of a rehashing of somebody else's ideas.

The storyline (i.e. Hubbard's original idea) was fatally flawed. It lacks the one thing that every good Science Fiction flick needs: Credibility, a real idea expanded in a unique way. It seems as though Hubbard took some 10 year old Cold War sentiments and the time machine cliche, stuck them together in a blender, and then poured the words out on paper as Russian contraband weapons and mysterious time travel devices. I could go on for hundreds of words about this, so I'll just sum it up: the story was boring, unoriginal, and unrealistic.

Maybe worth a library checkout if you're really into time travel stories, but overall I found it lacking in the elements of a good science fiction piece.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing book., August 24, 2000

By 

"pat2717" (Santa Fe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Very Strange Trip (Hardcover)

I was excited to read this book because I enjoy time travel books and have always been impressed with L. Ron Hubbards writing. According to the introduction of the book, Hubbard wrote the story as a screenplay and then Dave Wolverton converted it into a book. Usually, things go the other way and people say "compared to the book, the movie stunk!" In this case, unfortunately, the book stunk. I read about 50 pages before I began wondering if it was a pre-teen book. I read 50 more and began wondering if I was wasting my time. I was certainly wasting my time. The characters are preposterously simple and unrealistic. The scenarios they encounter are never set up well and the characters reactions are out of a saturday morning cartoon. The protagonist is a near imbecile and he is by far the most intelligent character in the entire story. Save your time and money, this one misses the mark.