1911–1986 · pulp science-fiction writer, founder of Dianetics and Scientology
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) was a prolific and fast pulp writer — westerns, adventure, science fiction — before publishing Dianetics in 1950 and founding the Church of Scientology in 1953. The remark on this page is quoted so often because of what happened next, and that is also the reason to handle it carefully: a line that sounds like a confession of intent is exactly the kind of thing memory improves over forty years. Several people who knew him in the pulp years recalled him saying it; the Church has contested it for as long as it has circulated, and Hubbard himself is not recorded as being asked about it.