Hubbard, L. Ron (22 page)

By the time he was nineteen, he had voyaged over a quarter of a million sea miles and many thousands on land recording his adventures and experiences in a series of diaries. These were mixed with story ideas as L. Ron Hubbard began to develop his unique writing career.

Returning to the United States, his insatiable curiosity and demand for excitement sent him into the sky as a barnstorming pilot where he quickly earned a reputation for skill and daring. He set new records in motorless flight, and a number of popular articles on aviation followed, before he turned his attention again to the sea.

This time it was four-masted schooners and voyages into the Caribbean. He was later awarded the prestigious Explorer's Club flag which he flew aboard vessels he used on numerous expeditions into Alaskan, Mediterranean and Atlantic waters.

L. Ron Hubbard mixed his early adventures with an education that was to serve him well at the typewriter. While his first articles were nonfiction and based upon his aviation experience, he soon began to draw from his travels to produce a wide variety of stories: adventure, mystery, aviation, Far East action, westerns, and fantasy.

By 1938, already established and recognized as one of the top-selling authors of the field, he was requested by the publishers of a newly acquired magazine, Astounding Science Fiction, to try his hand at science fiction. Though educated as an engineer, he protested that he did not write about machines, but that he wrote about people. "That's just what we want," he was told.

The result was a cornucopia of stories from L. Ron Hubbard that changed the face of modern science fiction and fantasy, and excited intense critical comparison-then as now-with the best of H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe.

His renowned classic Final Blackout was written during this period, electrifying the readership with its gripping premise of the agonies of a future nuclear war. The landmark work not only attracted vast popularity but also swirled a gale of controversy in an era that struggled to deny the possibility of universal conflict. To this day, Final Blackout, revealing intimate understanding of frontline leadership and the harsh realities of war, not only remains a benchmark novel for the very best in speculative fiction, but serves as a timeless beacon warning of political exploitation and excess.

Shortly after completing this masterwork, L. Ron Hubbard, with his vast knowledge of command at sea was called to combat service as a United States Naval officer.

Before World War II ended, as he, himself, recovered from wounds, L. Ron Hubbard concentrated on the task of fully researching and understanding the human condition.

Over the next forty years millions of words of his nonfiction appeared detailing his remarkable researches and discoveries.

In 1980, to celebrate his golden anniversary as a professional writer, L.

Ron Hubbard returned to science fiction and created Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000. The epic, hailed as the biggest science fiction book ever written, quickly moved onto every national best-seller list in the U.S. and shortly thereafter was republished in fifty-three countries.

This singular feat was followed by an even more spectacular achievement, his New York Times best-selling magnum opus, the ten-volume Mission Earth series-not only a grand science fiction adventure in itself, but, in the best tradition of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll, a rollicking, satirical romp through the foibles of our civilization.

L. Ron Hubbard's prodigious and creative output over more than a half century as a professional author has assumed the awesome proportions of a true publishing phenomenon. With more than two hundred novels, novelettes and a library of nonfiction books and published texts, and more than two hundred short stories culminating in almost a hundred million copies of his works sold in thirty-one languages worldwide-L. Ron Hubbard is without doubt one of this century's most important and influential authors.