Are Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s far-fetched tales in China and Asia diaries actually true - at least partly?
- Often dismissed as fanciful and racist, L. Ron Hubbard’s stories of his trips to Asia as a teenager in the 1920s might not all be as made up as once believed
Today, the name L. Ron Hubbard is automatically referenced as the founder of the Church of Scientology, the celebrity-laden super-rich pyramid faith that has spread around the world with controversies and scandals following at every step.
That the religion’s tenets, mostly of attaining consciousness commensurate with a gang of intergalactic superbeings, were dreamed up by Hubbard is well known. Perhaps it is more affirming than surprising then, to find that when spending a few idle hours flicking through old American pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s – Thrilling Adventures, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction – you’ll often see Hubbard’s byline.
He was a regular contributor to more than half a dozen bestselling publications available on every news-stand across the United States. You may also come across some pretty good stories from authors Michael Keith, Charles Gordon, Bernard Hubbel, Barry Randolph, Humbert Reynolds … a few of the dozen pseudonyms Hubbard used when writing detective stories, Westerns, sci-fi, or regaling readers with the exploits of French Legionnaires, ace airmen and American mercenaries. All of which earned him fame, fortune and a great deal of notoriety, to the tune of 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million books sold.
Having grown up in the first decades of the 20th century in Montana, Hubbard daydreamed of visiting Asia and becoming a writer. In the 1920s, he did visit China and then, in the 1930s, became one of America’s best-known pulp fiction writers, often drawing on his experiences in the Far East.
Some of the characters he described seem to be pure pulp fabrications, but on closer investigation, it appears Hubbard may not always have been exaggerating as much as expected.
More than a dozen of Hubbard’s short stories (of the well over 150 that were published) were set in China, and they are among his best. In The Devil – With Wings (1937), a British flying ace battles the Japanese from Shanghai to Vladivostok. In Spy Killer (1936), an American seaman falsely accused of murder escapes into Shanghai’s old town.
