L. Ron Hubbard

From Wikinfo

Biography

Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska. During the 1920s, he traveled twice to the Far East to visit his parents during his father's posting to the United States Navy base on the island of Guam. He attended George Washington University in Washington, DC between 1930-32 to study civil engineering but left before the end of his final year. He authored numerous pulp magazine stories and novellas during the 1930s. They sold well, earning Hubbard a place in the hall of fame of the golden age of science fiction. He wrote primarily in the science fiction and fantasy fiction genres, though he also authored several westerns and romances. One of his fictional stories was Final Blackout, a controversial story about a war-ravaged Europe, another, Fear, was a psychological horror story.

Hubbard joined the United States Navy in June 1941 as an officer. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941, he was ordered to Australia. He subsequently commanded the harbor protection vessel USS YP-422 (based in Boston, Massachusetts) and the subchaser USS PC-815 (based in Astoria, Oregon). He was relieved of command of both vessels, in the latter case after shelling a Mexican island off Baja California. Most of Hubbard's wartime service was spent ashore in the continental United States. He was mustered out of the active service list in late 1945 and resigned his commission in 1950.

In June 1950, Hubbard published a book describing his created self-improvement technique, Dianetics. March of 1952 was when Hubbard introduced his philosophically new idea that understood knowledge is a different situation for an individual than is knowledge in recall. He did that in a lecture that introduced the philosophy which he called Scientology. The following December, he founded the first Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey, declaring it to be an applied religious philosophy. He moved to England and during the remainder of the 1950s he oversaw the worldwide development of the philosophy and the Church from an office in London. In 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor, an extensive manor house and grounds near Sussex in East Grinstead, England. It became the worldwide headquarters of the Church for some years.

In 1967, Hubbard appointed himself Commodore of a small fleet of Scientologist-crewed ships which spent the next eight years cruising the Mediterranean Sea. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and lived for a while in Florida.

In about 1979 he moved to a ranch he had purchased on O'Donovan Road in Creston, California, where he continued, to develop the philosophy, Scientology, and the Church which disseminates it. The Church of Scientology announced his death in 1986, stating Hubbard had causatively departed his body to do "higher level spiritual research," unencumbered from the confines of his mortal body. He did not appear in public after 1981.

During the 1980s, Hubbard wrote a 10 volume science book, Battlefield Earth. In 2000, Hubbard's Battlefield Earth was adapted as a screen play and starred Barry Pepper and John Travolta as the hero and villain respectively. Upon his death, he willed all of his copyrights and properties to the Church of Scientology.

Partial bibliography

Fiction

Fear
Final Blackout
Buckskin Brigades
Ole Doc Methuselah
Typewriter in the Sky
Slaves and Masters of Sleep
The Kingslayer
Battlefield Earth
Mission Earth series: 1) The Invaders Plan; 2) Black Genesis; 3) The Enemy Within; 4) An Alien Affair; 5) Fortune of Fear; 6) Death Quest; 7) Voyage of Vengeance; 8) Disaster; 9) Villainy Victorious; 10) The Doomed Planet

Dianetics and Scientology

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Science of Survival: Prediction of Human Behavior
Dianetics 55!
Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought
Scientology: A New Slant on Life
Self Analysis
All About Radiation
Have You Lived Before This Life?
Scientology: A History of Man
Clear Body, Clear Mind: The Effective Purification Program
Child Dianetics
Speaking From Experience : Illustrated Solutions to the Business Problems You Face Everyday
How to Live though an Executive
Purification: An Illustrated Answer to Drugs
Scientology 8-8008
Handbook for Preclears
The Volunteer Minister's Handbook
Introduction to Scientology Ethics