officer
caught up in the mystery and intrigues of pre-communist China. With his
extensive knowledge of the world and its people and his ability to write in
any style and genre, L. Ron Hubbard rapidly achieved prominence as a
writer of action, adventure, western, mystery and suspense. Such was the
respect of his fellow writers, including Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett
and Edgar Rice Burroughs, that he was only twenty-five when they elected him
president of the New York chapter of the American Fiction Guild.
In
addition to his career as a leading writer of fiction, he worked as a successful
screenwriter in Hollywood where he wrote the original story and script for
Columbia's 1937 hit serial The Secret of Treasure Island. His work on
numerous films for Columbia, Universal and other major film studios involved
writing, providing storylines and serving as a script consultant.
In
1938, he was approached by the venerable New York publishing house of Street and
Smith, the publishers of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
Wanting to capitalize on the proven reader appeal of the L. Ron Hubbard byline
to capture more readers for this emerging genre, they essentially offered to buy
all the science fiction he wrote. When he protested that he did not write about
machines and machinery but about people, they told him this was exactly what
they wanted. The rest is history.
The impact and influence that his novels and stories had on the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror virtually amounted to the changing of the genre. It is the compelling human element that he originally brought to this new genre that remains today the basis of its growing international popularity.
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