I am an avid reader. So much so that by the time I was in middle school I had started to choose books based on their length. I didn't want to have to bring two books with me all the time because I would finish the first and have nothing to read. All that is by way of explaining that when I first picked up Battlefield Earth in my local library I knew nothing about the author. The book was 1,000 pages and that was good enough for me. It wasn't my favorite but it was ok. I went on to read 5 or 6 books of his Mission Earth series. He wasn't my favorite, but he wasn't extremely popular so his entire series was constantly available. If you are a Sci-Fi fan and have experienced the frustration of never being able to find the next book in a series at the library, you will understand why this appealed to me. I finally gave up on the series and the author. The story was boring, but it was more than that. If you read a lot of an author's writing, you get a sense for their personality. It simply comes through in their narration and their choices in the book.
I read more than 3,000 pages of L Ron Hubbard's writing and I think I grew to know the man pretty well. He was a cynical man with an extremely low opinion of the human race. I can't quote the stories directly but he would have situations where a man would try to rob a woman, but she get's the better of him and then keeps him as a sex slave. It was full of characters with low cunning trying to outmaneuver each other. You have trouble identifying with or rooting for anybody in his stories. Not one person really embodies our ideas of a hero.
Years later when I got my license I was driving through Cincinnati and saw this giant billboard for Dianetics. I was baffled. I was pretty sure the guy must be dead. He struck me as a contemporary of Heinlein from his style, so why is one of his books big enough to warrant a billboard in 1997? I cannot describe to you the sense of unreality I experienced when I mentioned this to my parents and they told me about Scientology.
Did you know someone in grade school who just didn't seem to know the line? They would take pranks too far and continue fights too long. Even then, you got the sense that this guy would spend large portions of his life in prison if he didn't learn some restraint. These kids weren't evil, I honestly think they probably had some development issues.You know who was? The kid that came up with shit for that kid to do. This kid would get the first kid in to way more trouble than he was capable on his own. to me, Hubbard was the second kid.
I would not accept a soda from that kid. I certainly wouldn't accept a system of beliefs from him. By the way, I'm the kid that was always trying to stop the way too far prank from happening. For me, the kid that took things too far also happened to be a fiercely loyal friend and didn't deserve all the grief he brought on himself. I don't think Hubbard believed in anything. He certainly didn't believe in Scientology. He as good as told me in his fiction. It is just another pulp fiction story-line. To me, he will always be a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat without a tablecloth covering the cage under the table. I will never understand how people fell for it.