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Please note that words with an asterisk (*) are defined at the bottom of this page! Only first appearances are marked.

Dedicated to Virgil Wilhite (1942/2004), collector & LRH* researcher.
This page has been released April 11, 2005, exactly one year after his passing.

 
Index:

• The fiction legacy of L. Ron Hubbard & Redefining words
• Battles fought on Wikipedia ('science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard')  (on different page)
• Virgil Wilhite, ‘L. Ron Hubbard collector’ and his role in the Widder Bibliography
• Statistics
          - (1) General overview
          - (2) The ‘Feb 1932 - Nov 1950’ time frame (pre-Scientology)  (also ‘Oct 1981 - Jun 1993’ time frame)
  
• Complete works of fiction in chronological order                  (this chapter on separate html page!)
• Series of stories  (these stories are also represented in the chronological list)
• Pen names

Out on the Internet you will find a variety of sites that tell about L. Ron Hubbard his fiction work, mostly they would then focus on the Science Fiction and the Fantasy stories, as these appeared more popular. None of these sites however give you a complete listing of his fiction legacy. For this reason it is very hard to establish how much of it was truly Science Fiction. It would also be desirable to have a brief synopsis of each of these stories. A variety of the titles of these stories are self explaining. For example “Ride 'Em, Cowboy!” is likely to be a Western story. A title like “Forbidden Voyage.” on the other hand may be a harder task. It may be just an Adventure story, but it could be a Science Fiction story. Would you have a synopsis of the story things tend to be much more evident.

The purpose of this page is to enable anyone to find out and verify for him/herself what is true about those claims being made that L. Ron Hubbard would be primarily a Science Fiction writer and that Dianetics and Scientology was a natural continuation of that. I give you a complete listing of his fiction in chronological publication order, it is directly followed by a listing of his unpublished fiction stories. All this is offered as information, the genres and the synopsis are given. You can also see very clearly when he wrote a certain genre of stories. It basically starts with predominant Adventure/Western type stories, later they tend to be primarily Science Fiction/Fantasy stories.

The following work has been found invaluable for my initiative:

William J. Widder, M.A. The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard: A comprehensive bibliography & reference guide to published and selected unpublished works. Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.; Bridge Publications, Incorporated, 1994; 373pp. © 1994 L. Ron Hubbard Library ISBN 0-88404-936-1

This work gives a treasure of very detailed background information. It gives full details about any of the published & unpublished stories, and lists even the incomplete stories, filmscripts and so on. Details are given of where, when and who had published these, including any reprints, and any translations. In addition it will give much background data concerning how these stories came about or what L. Ron Hubbard was involved with at the time if this was relating to the stories written. All the entries are cross indexed in various ways in this work. I have only extracted that information that will fulfil the purpose of my initiative. I have followed the story publication sequence as given in this work. The synopsis are also taken from this work. Enough information is given enabling you to positively establish/verify the genre of the story. Reason for me giving this information should be obvious, simply to take away the arguments of the critics who associate Dianetics and Scientology as being Science Fiction as well..

The different genre's given on this page are also as per what is indicated in the bibliography. The genre's are divided in the categories ‘Adventure’, ‘Fantasy’, ‘Mystery/Detective’, ‘Romance’, ‘Science Fiction’ and ‘Western’.

There exists also a more recent publication about the fiction of L. Ron Hubbard:

William J. Widder, M.A.
Master Storyteller: An illustrated tour of the fiction of L. Ron Hubbard.
Hollywood, California, U.S.A.; Galaxy Press Llc, 2003; 194pp.
ISBN 1-59212-054-7

I do not have a copy of this second book, but judging from the reviews I have read this seems to work best as a display of the artwork associated with L. Ron Hubbard's fiction writing career.

---

Virgil Wilhite was probably the one who had the most extensive L. Ron Hubbard collection in existence. He told me that he already during the 70's went to Scientology organizations and purchased interesting items from their old stock. In 1989 he opened a small bookshop in downtown Clearwater (Fl), close to the Fort Harrison hotel. It was in this very bookshop that I got acquainted with him, and learned about his passion about books and collecting. His area of collecting was basically anything that falls in relation to L. Ron Hubbard, his fiction as well as his non-fiction works. It included those works that were recommended by L. Ron Hubbard. For very many years he traveled and gathered information. When I left for Europe I kinda lost track of him. I rekindled my contact with him when I found him again a few years later while I searched for him on the Internet. Since that time we had regular contact through emails, had various lengthy discussions on a variety of subjects, exchanged information and helped eachother with our collecting. It was Virgil that I had asked about the L. Ron Hubbard recommendation for the World Book Dictionary (see my page ‘LRH vs Dictionaries’). It was him that told me that I could find it in the old red volumes*. He also confided to me that he had sold many copies of this dictionary through the years to Scientologists.

It was shocking for me when I learned from his wife that he had unexpectedly passed away (heart attack). I had lost a good friend, a source of information and listener.

My copy of the 1994 Widder Bibliography carries a personal inscription from Virgil.

Printed: “To Michel, I may have put the main portion of this book together, in so far as the basic research goes, but the Sea Org* did a great job in creating a Valuable Final Product!! Virgil Wilhite 4/14/98”.

Statistics

• (1) General overview
• (2) The ‘Feb 1932 - Nov 1950’ time frame (pre-Scientology)
            (also ‘Oct 1981 - Jun 1993’ time frame)
  

 
(1) General overview

The table below will give you a summary of all fiction stories counted and divided by their genre. For this list please see Index entry on top of page: “Complete works of fiction in chronological order”, on this listing you can also verify any synopsis for its actual genre.

This table compares the Science Fiction tales with all the other genres combined:

Some may want to add the Fantasy stories to the Science Fiction stories:

Either way would this make L. Ron Hubbard primarily a Science Fiction writer in regards to all his fiction writing? (i.e. isolated from his non-fiction writings) You'll have be the judge of that!

 
(2) The ‘Feb 1932 - Nov 1950’ time frame (pre-Scientology)

No work of fiction was published during 31 years after November 1950. Since that time L. Ron Hubbard devoted all of his time to researching and developing the subject of Scientology and Dianetics.

It makes for an interesting comparison with the published fiction works in the ‘Oct 1981 - Jun 1993’ time frame.

Here the focus is obviously put almost entirely on the Science Fiction genre. To be noted is as well that the bulk (11) of these recorded Science Fiction works were made up with the rather thick volume releases of ‘Battlefield Earth’ and ‘Mission Earth’ series (10 volumes).

Various stories have a related theme, have the same characters, or simply were sequels. On the various websites they may be referred to as series, or they may also be referred to as individual stories. For the clarity I have listed them below.

#  -  indicates the numbering as used on the chronological list of all fiction stories. Synopsis of these individual stories can be found on that list.

1.  Hazardous Professions (The Hell-Job Series)
A series of 17 thematically related stories based on hazardous occupations experienced, or researched, by L. Ron Hubbard. The stories were published between July 1936 and December 1937.

2.  Kilkenny Cats
A series of five stories related by setting and characterization which were written under the pen name ‘Kurt von Rachen’. They were published between July 1940 and February 1942.
In the year 2893, after a number of revolutions have taken place, the government attempts to rid itself of future threats by sending rival forces to colonize a planet—knowing that they will destroy each other.
Among them, however, are two rebels who devise means to prevent the rival groups of scientists and longshoremen from killing each other, and whose goal is to return to Earth and topple the dictatorial regime.

3.  Ole Doc Methuselah
A collection of seven short stories related by characterization and theme, written under the pen name ‘Rene Lafayette’.
The stories were published between October 1947 and January 1950.
A seven-hundred-year-old Soldier of Light, ‘Ole Doc Methuselah,’ travels throughout the galaxy performing medical miracles, and gets involved in planetary politics—violating the rules of his profession.

4.  The Conquest of Space
Nine stories related by theme, settings and characterization which were published between July 1948 and November 1950.
The stories are based on information obtained from archives in the future—after man has conquered space—that deal with the human barriers that man must overcome to reach the stars.

5.  Mission Earth
A science fiction satire in ten volumes.
The volumes were published between October 1985 and November 1987.

L. Ron Hubbard is known to have made use of various pseudonyms for writing his fiction stories and even some his non-fiction writings. It is rumoured that he was asked to do so because he wrote these stories with such a high velocity. Just for not letting it appear that so many of these stories that appeared in these pulp fiction publications were actually written by the same person.

All the above ones are as listed in William J. Widder's ‘The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard: A comprehensive bibliography’, 1994. An additional possibility for a pseudonym has surfaced since:  Frederick Engelhardt.

Vocabulary:

     LRH:
An usual abbreviation for ‘L. Ron Hubbard’.
     red volume(s):
Refers to ‘The Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology’, this is a series of books that contain the HCOBs, and any technical references. These references are mostly printed red ink on white paper, and the volumes themselves have red bindings. The ‘old red volumes’ refers to the 1976 release, ‘new red volumes’ refers to the 1991 release.
     Sea Org, SO:
Abbreviation for ‘Sea Org(anization)’. This is the senior organization within Scientology that run the Advance Organizations and also see to it that Class IV organizations (lower level services) do function well. If needed they may send out missions to correct if things don't run smoothly.