New Hubbard fiction?

[Emma]

I got an email from Amazon that was entitled:

Now available: "Greed (Stories from the Golden Age)" by L. Ron Hubbard on Amazon.com

The headline alone made me laugh

So I clicked on the link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592123694/ref=pe_143810_20091760_snp_dp

And sure enough there are a bunch of fiction books by Hubbard I've never heard of.

Greed
Hurtling Wings
The Baron of Coyote River
Yukon Madness
Wind-Gone-Mad
Under the Die-hard Brand
etc.

Then I found the site that promotes this crud:

http://www.galaxypress.com/stories-from-the-golden-age

Has anyone else heard of these titles before? Is Hubbard writing from the grave???

 

[scooter]

A true "ghost writer" eh?

Wonder if it's just that Slappy McSavage has found that all His usual tricks for "getting the stats up" aren't working any more so He's gone back to selling Hubbard writings that haven't been tampered with by evil transcriptionists?

The mind boggles

 

[Dean Blair]

With all of the great writers and other books available I can't imagine that they are selling very many of these.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

Golden Age of BeatDowns

I think COB slipped in a book that he wrote about his wins at Golden Era Productions while slamming ethics in on staff.

 

[TG1]

Yup. Looks like a cult operation. Readers for the CD audio version are:

Bob Caso (Reader), Mr. James King (Reader), Jim Meskimen (Reader), Tamara Meskimen (Reader), Noelle North (Reader), Jeff Pomerantz (Reader), Mr. Phil Proctor (Reader), Enn Reitel (Reader), Josh R. Thompson (Reader), Michael Yurchak (Reader), R.F. Daley (Narrator)

Bolded names above are known (to me) Kool-Aid drinkers. Others I don't know about.

 

[ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn]

With all of the great writers and other books available I can't imagine that they are selling very many of these.

I don't think anyone is delusional enough to think there would be interest in this. I think this is just another way to shakedown the cult members for more cash, not only will they be forced to buy a copy, they will be forced to get the deluxe edition for a $5,000.00 donation.

 

[Dulloldfart]

Here is a Hubbard bibliography that contains some of those titles, Emma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard_bibliography

I would guess that they are all genuine Hubbard works and not created after his death. Maybe the bibliography is incomplete, or maybe the stories were originally published with different titles.

Paul

 

[AngeloV]

It's QUIZ time boys and girls! Look at the following two statements. One of them is true and one is false. Do you know which is which? Think real hard now!!

A. The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet -- 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged." His name was Xenu. He used renegades. (OT III, by LRH)

B. Once there had been a single government of Earth controlled by the western races, but the long-oppressed people of Asia finally struck back with a "cohesion projector." In an instant, the device established a solid, invisible wall of space—creating a dividing line between the superpowers, with the Asiatic Federation inside and the United Continents outside. Both powers are tenuously perched on the brink of war until George Marquis Lorrilard comes along. A sometime lieutenant of the pitiful handful of space guards known as the United Continents Space Navy, he's used the experience to become a space exploiter. Far less driven by altruism than by the ferocious thirst and hunger of greed, Lorrilard sets a course to change forever the fate of Earth and the stars. (Greed, by LRH)

 

[ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn]

It's QUIZ time boys and girls! Look at the following two statements. One of them is true and one is false. Do you know which is which? Think real hard now!!

A. The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet -- 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged." His name was Xenu. He used renegades. (OT III, by LRH)

B. Once there had been a single government of Earth controlled by the western races, but the long-oppressed people of Asia finally struck back with a "cohesion projector." In an instant, the device established a solid, invisible wall of space—creating a dividing line between the superpowers, with the Asiatic Federation inside and the United Continents outside. Both powers are tenuously perched on the brink of war until George Marquis Lorrilard comes along. A sometime lieutenant of the pitiful handful of space guards known as the United Continents Space Navy, he's used the experience to become a space exploiter. Far less driven by altruism than by the ferocious thirst and hunger of greed, Lorrilard sets a course to change forever the fate of Earth and the stars. (Greed, by LRH)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Stars

It's too bad nobody was interested in Xenu The Musical when Hubbard was trying to pimp it to Hollywood after having a meltdown over how Star Wars was more successful than everything he ever accomplished in his life combined.

It would have made for some good lulz if it was turned into a movie

 

[GreyWolf]

Free e-books has been pushing a lot of His fiction to. I just about gave up my subscription.

 

[Ulduz]

By some accounts only 10% of Hubbard’s works have been published so far. There is plenty of LRH data that none of us has heard about. It seems to me that one person could not produce that much rubbish during his “super-productive” life. I bet he got help from unpublished writers -- we all know about ghostwriting.

 

[Dulloldfart]

It seems to me that one person could not produce that much rubbish during his “super-productive” life. I bet he got help from unpublished writers -- we all know about ghostwriting.

That's an interesting idea. We know that with Scientology he published oodles of "non-fiction" stuff under his own name that was written by others. I haven't heard of him doing the same with the overt fiction, though, apart from a minute amount RVY wrote about doing with Mission Earth. Any offers?

Paul

 

[Lurker5]

A true "ghost writer" eh?

Wonder if it's just that Slappy McSavage has found that all His usual tricks for "getting the stats up" aren't working any more so He's gone back to selling Hubbard writings that haven't been tampered with by evil transcriptionists?

The mind boggles

My guess is this /\ /\ /\ /\

It's a scam, to bring in money. What else is new . . .

 

[Dulloldfart]

Free e-books has been pushing a lot of His fiction to. I just about gave up my subscription.

http://www.free-ebooks.net/authors.php?author=L. Ron Hubbard

Looks like they are only giving away four:

If I Were You
Reign of the Gila Monster
The Cossack
The Dangerous Dimension

Paul

 

[anonomog]

http://www.free-ebooks.net/authors.php?author=L. Ron Hubbard

Looks like they are only giving away four:

If I Were You
Reign of the Gila Monster
The Cossack
The Dangerous Dimension

Paul

Free, but the download forces you to a library donation page, where your credit card has already been preapproved, everytime you try and exit. Escaping without donating seizes the hard drive.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Do you remember Ai Pedrito? Same thing.

There are a number of writers whose stuff is cobbled together, revised and thrown into a book after they are dead so that the heirs can make money suckering adoring fans. The Silmarillion by J RR Tolkien (awful awful book though not as bad as Ai Pedrito) is an example.

Another possibility is that they just forged it all.

 

[Mystic]

Here is a Hubbard bibliography that contains some of those titles, Emma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard_bibliography

I would guess that they are all genuine Hubbard works and not created after his death. Maybe the bibliography is incomplete, or maybe the stories were originally published with different titles.

Paul

Ya, I've seen that Wikip page before. I have no idea who put that page up but much more than likely was by some sort of "Scientologist" which immediately puts the page at question.

I read the atrocious "Battlefield Earth" back in the '80s and I have wondered whether or not it was written by the Hubbard thing. I think ghost writers were being used in those days as Hubbard was just too far gone to write that much verbaige.

 

[Ulduz]

Ya, I've seen that Wikip page before. I have no idea who put that page up but much more than likely was by some sort of "Scientologist" which immediately puts the page at question.

I read the atrocious "Battlefield Earth" back in the '80s and I have wondered whether or not it was written by the Hubbard thing. I think ghost writers were being used in those days as Hubbard was just too far gone to write that much verbaige.

I read Battlefield Earth Volume I, too. In the beginning it was kind of interesting (I especially liked Dr. Grobe -- do you know that “grobe” means “coffin” in Russian?), but then I got bored because of endless repetitions of the same themes and put the book aside after leaving 2/3 of it untouched. That was the only sci-fi book by Hubbard that I read.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Battlefield Earth had its moments, but the Mission Earth decology was absolutely awful.

Some of Hubbard's earlier stuff like Fear was quite a bit better. I'm not even sure he wrote BE or ME anyway.

 

[Mark A. Baker]

By some accounts only 10% of Hubbard’s works have been published so far. There is plenty of LRH data that none of us has heard about. It seems to me that one person could not produce that much rubbish during his “super-productive” life. I bet he got help from unpublished writers -- we all know about ghostwriting.

I doubt it.

First, he wasn't especially successful from a financial perspective as a writer early in his career. If you want to hire a ghostwriter you need to pay them. To do that there needs to be the expectation of a potential profit to be had from offering up their work as your own. Hubbard was not a major force as a fiction writer and didn't command unusually high payments for his fiction. It was not a highly paying industry. Hence, there was no financial margin for him in 'farming out the work'.

Secondly, Hubbard wrote pulp fiction. Several pulp writers were reknown for their ability to churn out copy. It's the only way they could make an amount of money sufficient to support themselves. One thing Hubbard was known for among his coterie was his ability to crank out the copy. See the Harlan Ellison interview with Robin Williams where he discusses Hubbard's typewriter and how lrh streamlined his production process so as not to interrupt his writing.

Hubbard's friend Robert Heinlein was another such known for the voluminous number of stories he wrote. In one of his novels, "Stranger in a Strange Land", he has a character, whom he later indicated via another of his novells was based on Hubbard, with exactly the same sort of ability to constantly churn out pulp ficition.

Similarly, he clearly wrote a voluminous quantity of the early scientology tech & admin materials himself, whatever the source of the ideas may have been. Later on, when he had the advantage of numerous SO members to draw from in assisting him with his various activities, he apparently relied increasingly on others drafting policy letters & bulletins based on his dictated notes. Still, for a considerable time he was directly involved in generating of large quantities of copy. It was one talent which was evidently quite natural to him.

Thus, I suspect that one of Hubbard's genuine abilities was his ability to rapidly churn out copy and he used that early in his life to write stories for a living.


Mark A. Baker