It appeared, interestingly, in the February and March 1950 issues of Astounding Science Fiction. The April issue featured another Hubbard story ("Greed"), and then the May issue featured "Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science". A few more stories appeared in other SF magazines in 1950, but, essentially, the Dianetics essay marked a very sharp divide in Hubbard's career: he wrote no more science fiction after than (until Battlefield Earth.) His only later appearances in Astounding were Dianetics-related articles. "To the Stars" itself was published in book from by Ace in 1954 as Return to Tomorrow. I've only read the Astounding serial, so I don't know if the book version differed. In 2004 it was reprinted under the original title and subsequent editions have retained that title.
To the Stars (aka Return to Tomorrow), by L. Ron Hubbard
by Rich Horton
Basically, I expected the same of "To The Stars". I have to admit, I didn't get that. "To the Stars" is much more tightly written than the rest of the Hubbard I've read. The characters are implausible and stereotypical, but still more deeply felt, more lived in. The story is actually gripping, and Hubbard takes on some intriguing philosophical ideas, with some interesting twists on them. And at times it's genuinely moving.
So, is it good? Here I have to depart somewhat from the purely fictional values. Though I will say that the above paragraph may overstate things a bit -- to some extent the above is a reaction to my low expectations, which were exceeded, and while the story is what I've said, don't forget the caveats -- stereotypical characters, in particular. And while the prose is better than Hubbard's average, it's not great stuff. And the ideas -- well, it's perhaps necessary to discuss the story, and spoil it, to deal with those. For those who don't wish to have the story spoiled (though why would most people care about this one?), I'll say briefly that in the end I found some of the ideas presented sufficiently repugnant that even if the story were wholly successful on craft terms I wouldn't recommend it.
I'll describe the story in more detail, then, below, after some spoiler space.
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Spoilers follow.
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The story opens with a bit of infodump. Humanity has more or less spread to the stars, but light-speed restrictions apply. As a result, colonies are formed, but mostly abandoned. Only a few ships make what is called "The Long Passage". The main drawback is that the crewmen of the long passage find themselves isolated from their home cultures -- by the time they've made a loop around a few planets and returned to Earth, though they may be only a few months older, decades will have passed on Earth. For that reason, while insystem spaceship jobs are somewhat prized, very few people sign up for interstellar jobs.
This setup is not unfamiliar -- it's just a step away from implying Anderson's Kith, or Heinlein's Free Traders, or, much later, Vinge's Qeng Ho. But Hubbard doesn't go quite that far -- his long passage folk seem on the verge of creating such a society -- a society of space-based nomadic folk -- but they don't quite do that.
Anyway, the main character of "To The Stars" is Alan Corday, described as an Engineer Tenth Class. Apparently, Engineering is a hereditary position, and an Engineer Tenth is high status, but Alan's father has blown the family fortune, so he's kind of stuck -- he has a certain position to maintain, which he can't afford. He wants to marry his girl, but her family won't let him as long as he's broke. So he tells her he's going to work his way to Mars, and make his fortune there, then return in 5 years and they'll get married. We meet Alan at the spaceship yard -- every ship turns him down, as an Engineer Tenth Class is overqualified. Finally he meets and down and out bunch, led by a charismatic captain, and before you know it, he's been drugged and shanghaied onto the Hound of Heaven. It's no surprise when we find that the Hound is on the Long Passage.
Alan finds himself designated something like Third Mate in Training. The captain treats him viciously, while Alan becomes motivated to repair the beatup ship, believing he'll turn it around in time to get back to Earth. He also gets involved in a mutiny attempt -- only to see it fail and one of the leaders be spaced. Eventually they return to Earth. Alan hasn't been paying attention to objective time -- he imagines only a few years have passed, but actually 60 or so years have passed. Alan's world is completely different -- two political upheavals have occurred, and now engineers are detested as former oppressors. Somehow he finds his fiancee -- she's completely nuts, apparently having constructed a fantasy in which Alan returned as promised and married her.
Bitter, Alan returns to the ship, as there is no place for him on Earth. The rest of the story follows his hardening into a potential ship captain, as the ship's crew exterminates an alien race on another planet, then returns to Earth, only to find Earth radically changed again -- and this time, the Earthmen try to steal the ship's cargo. After a bitter battle, the old Captain dies, but Alan manages to save the ship and vanquish the Earthmen. He finds himself promoted to Captain, and he finds a letter from the old Captain, telling him his mission. Oh, and then he tricks an engineer from Earth to get on the ship, knocks him out and kidnaps him to be a replacement engineer, despite the fact that this man is married.
Here's the deal -- the Long Passage is essential for humanity. So all this stuff is justified. The Captain's coldness and cruelty are necessary to create a new leader. The genocide of aliens is necessary to keep them from doing the same to humans. (Shoot first, try to make friends never.) And of course kidnapping is justified because new people are essential on the Long Passage. It's all played perfectly straight -- I considered the idea that it was a satire -- after all, humanity is portrayed as pretty much thoroughly bad throughout -- maybe Hubbard was saying "All these evil acts are justified in order to save this evil species" -- if so, that didn't come through well.
The story itself, though broadly implausible in many places, is a pretty decent read, but the message is vile.
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