Typewriter in the Sky is a science fiction novel written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The protagonist Mike de Wolf finds himself inside the story of his friend's book. He must survive conflict on the high seas in the Caribbean during the 17th century, before eventually returning to his native New York. Each time a significant event occurs to the protagonist in the story he hears the sounds of a typewriter in the sky. At the story's conclusion, de Wolf wonders if he is still a character in someone else's story. The work was first published in a two-part serial format in 1940 in Unknown Fantasy Fiction. It was twice published as a combined book with Hubbard's work Fear. In 1995 Bridge Publications re-released the work along with an audio edition.
Typewriter in the Sky was well received. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it "swashbuckling fun", and John Clute and John Grant in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy characterized the work as the best of Hubbard's stories from the Arabian-fantasy theme. Writers have compared plot points from the 1951 science fiction book What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown and the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction by Zach Helm to Hubbard's tale.
Read more about Typewriter In The Sky: Plot, Publication History, Genres, Themes, Reception, Influence
Famous quotes containing the words typewriter and/or sky:
“When the typewriter stops in a New York office everybody’s embarrassed; men start to quarrel or to make love to the stenographer or drop lighted cigarettes in the wastebasket.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing—instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)