S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: HUBBARD, Lafayette Ronald
Aged: 74
Born: March 13, 1911
Where: Tilden, Nebraska
Died: January 24, 1986
Where: Creston, California
Interred: Cremated, ashes scattered at sea.
Married 1: Margaret Louise Grubb
When: (div)
Married 2: Sarah Northrup
When: ?? (div 1951)
Married 3: Mary Sue Whipp
When: October 30, 1952
Awarded:1982 Golden Scroll Award for Battlefield
Earth and; posthumously, 1992 Golden Scroll Award for Ole Doc Methuselah.
L. Ron Hubbard
No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap.
Worked as a free-lance writer from 1932 until the early 1950s with a slight break during WWII for U.S. Navy duty as a Lieutenant. Hubbard's fiction was primarily westerns, men's adventure, and mysteries with his Science Fiction containing a lot of fantasy. Ron was also a decent poet. Hubbard sold some fantasy and some SF in the 1930s but his first major move into SF writing came in the late 1940s when Astounding Stories moved to increase their market share. Some of those stories were anthologized as Ole Doc Methuselah in 1992.
After the early 50s, Hubbard was almost consumed with Dianetics and Scientology, creating foundations, churches, schools, research centers, and the Church of Scientology.
In the 1980s Hubbard returned to Science Fiction, at least he returned to the vehicle. Battlefield Earth was 450,000 words and over 1,000 pages long. Quickly followed by a ten volume Mission Earth that is sort of a combination of satire, social commentary, and a cry in the wilderness. Hubbard published, in a two year period, over 2 million words.
At this point in his life, Hubbard had the attention and wherewithall to accomplish positive things of a general origin. One of these was the creation of Writers of the Future, books containing the works of unknown SF writers thru-out the world. These volumes garnered many awards and acclamations.
When he died, Ron Hubbard had over 100 million books in print.
(COMMENT: There seems to be an ongoing accusation and denial about whether or not Hubbard created Scientology, and the church thereof, as a tax shelter/dodge. Don't know. Did he say he did? Often, and laughingly. Did he profit from that? You bet. It was a joke for him in the early 1950s. What it became may be something else again. But denying that he vocally made the claim is pointless. Too many know about it. Besides, Ron didn't deny his mistakes; he built on them, openly, with an ethic known only to himself. And since all religions are suspect, Hubbard didn't break any molds. GCW)
We're treating the present time beingness, (while) psychotherapy treats the
past and the brain. And brother, that's religion, not mental science. 1953
PEN NAMES: Rene LaFayette, Frederick Engelhardt, Michael Keith,
Ken Martin, B. A. Northrup, John Seabrook, Kurt von Rachen, and an occasional house name.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
BIOGRAPHY: Who Was Who in America, Vol IX, p175, or the L. Ron Hubbard site here.
