#l. ron hubbard

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

MAN, MANKIND, HUMANITY -- THE ENDANGERED SPECIES IN THE YEAR 3000.

NOTE: Visually, it's just a tad bit derivative of the "John Carter" books, but still a very impressive piece nonetheless.

OVERVIEW: "In 1982, L. Ron Hubbard commissioned artist Frank Frazetta to capture the spirit of "Battlefield Earth" on canvas. Frazetta’s painting, depicting the epic struggle between the human and alien races, now graces the cover of the latest edition of the bestselling science fiction novel."

-- GALAXY PRESS (Publisher of the fiction works of L. Ron Hubbard)

In memoriam -- Frank Frazetta (February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010), another legend lost. HAIL!!

Sources: http://capnscomics.blogspot.com/2017/07/battlefield-earth-by-frank-frazetta.html & Galaxy Press.

[vintagegeekculture]

Yes, Scientology is an evil cult that ruins people’s lives, yes, he spent a lifetime as a con-man and pathological liar, but I feel this should be said: L. Ron Hubbard was not just a good writer, but a great writer, even in the context of the Golden Age, which had no shortage of them, and he was a popular one as well, regularly topping reader polls in Unknown and Astounding.

His contemporaries, like Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp, were in awe of him (at least until things started to get weird with Dianetics). He was the first major writer of scifi to prioritize characterization over a science fiction idea, to write stories that dealt with neurosis and everyman protagonists over adventure stories where an engineer solves a problem, and because of that, his 1930s-40s work has aged so much better than nearly everyone else from that time. 

His best work, in my opinion, was not his scifi but his fantasy/horror, published mainly in John W. Campbell’s Unknown, a magazine he created for horror and fantasy (the two were, really, one genre until the 1960s, like twins conjoined at birth, there was scifi and then there was everything else, witch’s brews and dragons). They include Slaves of Sleep, which starts with a millionaire in modern times who was cursed by an Ifrit inside an artifact he finds, so that every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up in an Arabian Nights realm ruled by an evil genie queen, and whenever he wakes up, he vanishes from that world back into ours, and it’s unclear which is the dream and which is reality. This was a major theme of Heinlein’s work, the blurring between reality and fantasy in a story to the point where it was unclear which is which. He wrote two other fantasy novels with a similar theme: Typewriter in the Sky, which starts as a traditional pirate adventure story, but then there is a sound of a typewriter clacking in the sky, and then everything in the story is rearranged. 

The most fascinating work of Hubbard’s fantasy/horror, and the one with the best insight into his psyche, is Fear, a psychological thriller where a man is visited by demons and ghouls after mocking black magic, and it’s not clear if he’s hallucinating them or if he is going insane, and both possibilities are equally horrifying. There’s no Soldier of the Mist (or Gene Wolfe in general) without Fear. The reason this story is the most fascinating insight into Hubbard as a man is because I actually suspect that L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote about the blurring between fantasy and reality, and had a tendency to write nervous, unheroic, nebbish main characters, may not have been a complete scammer. I think he was the kind of scammer that believed his own bullshit and got high on his own supply, a pusher and user simultaneously. This reminds me of stories Scientology insiders tell where he would have auditing session after auditing session when he felt tormented, something it’s hard to imagine a completely cynical fraudster would do. 

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

L. Ron Hubbard - The Second Dynamic - Heron - 1981

[misforgotten2]

Cover by Hubert Rogers

[tilbageidanmark]

Worst cult in the world!

[cutekittenlady]

This is completely random but the way J.K. Rowlings views and political associations have effected the perception of her work remind me a lot of how L. Ron Hubbard is now best known for founding the church of scientology, which has completely overshadowed the fact that he was at one time a very prominent pulp fiction writer.

I mean, given it's commercial success I doubt Harry Potter will be overshadowed so easily, but hot damn if Rowling ain't working for it.

[danielleurbansblog]

Review: Writers of The Future Vol. 36

Synopsis: Sci-fi and fantasy of tomorrow . . . . . . selected by masters of today. Where can you find the hottest new talent all in one book? Right here. This year’s winning stories include a diverse collection of brilliantly realized worlds of dystopian politics, magical realism, post-apocalyptic adventure, and romance, dark fantasy and more. You’ll love this anthology because these writers…

[head-vampire]

“Insurrection” (1984)

From L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth

Art by Josh Kirby

Source

[icarus-suraki]

I was about to be like, okay, we've got Oppenheimer, when can we get Parsons?

And then I was like, lol wait, the Scientologists would never go for that.

Alas! Let us lament for the art that could have been! Dicks! Rockets! Pipe bombs! Arcane magical ceremonies! Demons! Love triangles! Yachts!

[vintagenews]

Source and details.

[whatisonthemoon]

CIA efforts to seize Scientology?

According to L. Ron Hubbard, who may or may not be saying this in order to obscure his own cooperation with the CIA:

The reason for this declaration is the consistent disaster visited upon her "allies" by the United States government and the efforts of that government since 1955, stepped up since 1963, to seize Scientology in the United States rather than forbid or stop it and the role played by the United States in inspiring the Victorian State attacks in Australia. Scientology technology is no longer offered to the United States government in any effort to assist her in political ends. Our participation extends only to our willingness to process U.S. officials as individuals unconnected with their political aims, if as individuals they are not debarred by other existing policies relating to treating the insane or our Ethics system. 

Hubbard, L. Ron "Politics, Freedom From" LRH Secretarial Executive Directive 56 Int 14 June 1965 reissued as Hubbard Communication Office Policy Letter 10 January 1968

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"FOR 1,000 YEARS MAN BECAME AN ENDANGERED SPECIES..."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on Frank Frazetta's artwork for the cover of the original "Battlefield Earth" (1982) novel, written by L. Ron Hubbard, turned into an 80s-style movie poster, c. 2023. Poster design by "Alko96" (via Reddit).

Resolution at 1004x1568 & 878x1332.

Sources: www.reddit.com/r/MoviePosterPorn/comments/12k48rt & Galaxy Press.

[kply-industries]

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

D. Alan Holmes - The Enlightenment ™, Part 0: A Handbook on Illusion - Holmes Publication - 1982 (design by Charles Wildbank)

[missiongirth]

Various print ads for volumes 5-8

[whatandroidsdreamof]

I'm just gonna leave this here:

https://www.mikerindersblog.org/neil-gaimans-scientology-suicide-story

Take this article with a grain of salt. It is a biased account of Neil Gaiman's family and their whole involvement with Scientology. But I think more people should know about his past and still ongoing ties to the cult.

Neil Gaiman refuting intentional, repeated, and at times systematic abuse towards multiple women as the mere collateral of being autistic is not only an incredible display of entitlement to both unchecked acts of predation and access to comfortable victimhood, an act of disregard for the personhood and widely perceived autonomy of other autistic people, and an immense insult to his victims, but is the soil upon his coffin in which the final nail has already been deeply embedded.