Hubbard’s stories appealed to such fans as Asimov and Ray Bradbury, but most were forgettable. The exceptions were Death’s Deputy, perhaps his best story, which came out of conversations with Campbell about “a man who officiates, all unwillingly, for the god of destruction”; Final Blackout, the postnuclear war novel that had impressed Heinlein; and Fear, a work of straight horror that had been conceived over grilled steaks at the editor’s house. Bradbury called this last story a “landmark novel in my life,” and he was so taken by it that he privately recorded it as a play.
