Also generally remarked upon in reference to L. Ron Hubbard’s work through the ’30s was his truly astounding versatility and rate of production. If one needed a story on a Monday, explained Standard Magazines’ editor Jack Schiff, one only had to telephone Ron Hubbard on a Friday—and the statement was no exaggeration. With a regular production of 100,000 words a month, Mr. Hubbard became a king of high-speed production writers (and that at only three days a week and in every major genre).

As a Hollywood screenwriter during this same period, his high-volume production on films such as Columbia’s The Adventures of the Mysterious Pilot and The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok and Warner Bros.’ “Spider” series was likewise notable, while his The Secret of Treasure Island stands as one of the most profitable serials of the time. Nor was that 1930s stint in Hollywood his only contribution to the medium and, in fact, among his last works through the ’70s and ’80s are several screenplays in a variety of genres. 

The Reshaping of genres

Yet, however varied and prodigious his output, no discussion of L. Ron Hubbard’s role in American ’30s fiction is complete without considering his hand in both the reshaping of science fiction and his truly indelible stamp on fantasy.

The year was 1938, and if L. Ron Hubbard was not yet exactly a household name, its appearance on the cover of a Thrilling Adventures or Five-Novels Monthly was guaranteed to instantly boost circulation. (The same was also true for a number of the pseudonyms he employed to span the various genres.) Hoping to capitalize on precisely that popularity, the publishing giant Street & Smith enlisted Mr. Hubbard to help reshape their newly acquired Astounding Science Fiction. Although not particularly familiar with the genre, Mr. Hubbard was intrigued with the proposal: whereas Astounding had previously focused on improbable machinery—spaceships, ray guns and robots—Street & Smith had decreed the magazine must take a more human turn with fully realized characters, i.e., “real people.”

The result was a body of fiction that will forever be talked about in speculative fiction circles, including the much acclaimed Final Blackout which Heinlein declared to be, “as perfect a piece of science fiction as has ever been written.” Also from this arrangement with Street & Smith came L. Ron Hubbard’s foray into the fantasy genre and his landmark work of the era, Fear. Drawn from his ethnological research, Fear tells of a clash between science and superstition that eventually led horror master Stephen King to call it, “one of the few books in the chiller genre which actually merits employment of the overworked adjective ‘classic,’ as in ‘This is a classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror.’”