SCIENTOLOGY

SCIENTOLOGY
   In its early years Scientology was known as DIANETICS (which see for details), a term still used within Scientology. The word "Scientology" was coined in 1952 by L. Ron HUBBARD, its founder; 2 of his books on the subject are This is Scientology: The Science of Certainty (1955 UK) and Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought (1956 UK).The activities of theScientologists have evolved in many curious and highly publicized ways since 1952. A lively account by a not wholly unsympathetic outsider can be found in Cults of Unreason (1973) by Dr Christopher Evans (1931-1979), but there have been several more critical studies since then, both of the movement and of its founder, notably L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (1987) by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr a.k.a. Ronald DeWolf, andBare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller, both the subject of legal action by the various corporate groups associated with the Church of Scientology.Scientology, originally a form of psychotherapy with many PSEUDO-SCIENCE overtones, became what has been described as the first sf RELIGION, when the Founding Church of Scientology was incorporated in Washington DC in July 1955. Scepticalcommentators saw this as no more than a crafty tax dodge, but in fact Scientology had from the beginning many of the qualities of a genuinereligion, and certainly aroused a religious fervour among its adherents. (In 1992 it was announced that an arm of the Church of Scientology, theChurch of Spiritual Technology, was building an underground crypt to house "the religious works of L. Ron Hubbard and other key religious works of mankind".)Hubbard extended Scientology overseas quite early, opening centres in Australia and South Africa in 1953, and himself moving to the UK in 1955. A bad setback was the result of the Board of Inquiry set up inthe state of Victoria, Australia, in 1963; the melodramatic Anderson report of 1965, having examined 151 witnesses, concluded that "Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially; and its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill", and Scientology was banned in Victoria. A later disaster was the deportation of L. Ron Hubbard from the UK as an undesirable alien in 1968. Scientology was then directed from the ships of Hubbard's fleet, usually found in the Mediterranean, until in 1975 Hubbardreturned to the USA. In 1978 he was found guilty in Paris of obtaining money under false pretences through Scientology, and sentenced in absentia to 4 years' imprisonment.Scientology and Hubbard had lost some ground, but the movement continued to attract members, and Hubbard himself was the subject of an enormous publicity boost when the Scientology publishers, Bridge Publications, reissued in 1984 Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth(1982), originally published by a mainstream publisher, St Martin's Press, and followed it with an sf "dekalogy", the 10-vol Mission Earth saga by Hubbard (1983-7; later vols posthumous); these were heavily andexpensively promoted. Around this time Hubbard had also founded and sponsored the WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST, good entrants to which were published in the L. RON HUBBARD PRESENTS WRITERS OF THE FUTURE series of original anthologies, \#1 being in 1985. All of this did something to re-establish Hubbard (who had been discredited in the eyes of some observers) as an important figure in the sf community, and something of a philanthropist, though his own writings, and the literary contests and workshops, became controversial themselves; the sf community is deeply divided as to the merit of the latter, and Hubbard's own sf books of the 1980s are seldom highly regarded.Hubbard's role remains enigmatic; somesaw him as a cynic, the founder of an organization calculated to bring in an income of many millions of dollars, which it did. This is almost certainly too simplistic a view, though the opposing view - that he was a man of genuine if eccentric vision, totally convinced of the truth of his case, and fighting valiantly against the powerful conspiracy of orthodox psychiatry - may also be less than the full story.Scientology is the most dramatic example of the precepts of pulp sf being put into practice in the real world. One regular attraction of pulp sf, as witness Hubbard's own stories and those of his one-time colleague A.E. VAN VOGT, was its dramatization of the idea that inside us there may be a SUPERMAN struggling to get out. The glowing promise held out by scientologists is that this dream can be realized.
   PN

Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. . 2011.

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