Quote:
Originally posted by Moonduck
The classic story/myth was that Hubbard and another major sci-fi author (I want to say Heinlein) were discussing various topics when the discussion of the fastest way to make money came up. Hubbard's hypothesis was religion. They made a bet, the gist of which was that Hubbard would start a religion whole-cloth and make a million dollars from it within a certain time-frame.
Sad to say, the other author lost the bet.
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The "other author" was John Campbell, editor of Astounding (later Analog) Science Fiction, and the most influential editor in the field. A few years after that, Astounding essentially launched Scientology into the big time (relatively speaking) with a special issue devoted to it. And Campbell subsequently published a lot of stories on scientology themes (One of them, a novel called "They'd Rather Be Right," won a Hugo Award). I've often wondered if Campbell wasn't getting something on the side from Hubbard. They'd known each other for many years before Hubbard launched Scientology.