Under the Black Ensign

This is a gem in American pulp fiction, in all its campy glory. The full-cast performance, complete with sound effects, only enhances its appeal, making weaknesses such as stock characters, a quick-and-dirty pirate plot, and unrealistically swift sea travel simply melt away into insignificance. While the performances of the readers are over-the-top at times, the approach doesn't seem out of place for such a narrative setting. Moreover, the ever-present soundtrack is never distracting and, if anything, lends a richness to the imagined picture that would, in other titles, be filled by narrative description. Those who listened to "The Shadow" and "Flash Gordon" growing up will love this production. A.A. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

July 14, 2008
Errol Flynn would feel quite at home in Hubbard's ripping yarn of Caribbean piracy in the year 1680, first published in 1935. Press-ganged into the Royal Navy, Tom Bristol faces 100 lashes just as buccaneers attack the British man-o'-war on which he reluctantly serves. Tom soon realizes the pirate life is for him, a life replete with swordplay, maroonings and naval battles with ships lost in the roiling fog of cannon smoke. Supplementing the illustrated text are an extensive glossary of nautical and period terms, an essay entitled “L. Ron Hubbard and American Pulp Fiction,” and a foreword by Kevin J. Anderson on the golden age of pulp fiction. The man who would go on to found Scientology never achieves the visceral intensity of such fellow pulp writers as Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, but he conducts his minisaga in just the fashion readers of the era expected.