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AVING DEVOTED THREE DECADES TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF DIANETICS AND SCIENTOLOGY beyond 1950, it was not until the 1980s we find L. Ron Hubbard returning to the business of popular literature. In the interim, the last of the pulps had quietly died, and the majority of those who had filled the rough-cut pages had slipped into relative obscurity. (Although what with eventual film adaptation the likes of “The Shadow,” “The Phantom,” and “Doc Savage” would continue to dwell in popular imagination.) One might further argue that much of what still endears us to the pulps, including the stylized power of seasoned professionals with several million words to their credit, was also lost. Hence, descriptions of the modern novel as a “screenplay with the ‘he said’s’ left in,” i.e., narratively flat and prosaic. Hence, too, the quite unprecedented fervor following word of L. Ron Hubbard’s return to the field, and the actual newspaper headlines: “Writer Resumes Career with Masterful Epic.”
