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L. Ron Hubbard’s technical articles for Sportsman Pilot helped popularize aviation through the 1930s.
     It was precisely that renowned rate of production that is still recalled in Hollywood where Ron arrived in the spring of 1937 to adapt his novel Murder at Pirate Castle for a Columbia Pictures' serials production. Retitled The Secret of Treasure Island, the film was particularly applauded as a first-rate cliffhanger, and according to Variety: “will prove a good biz bet in action houses.” The prediction, as noted, proved fully correct, with a virtually unrivaled box-office take. Likewise memorable from these Hollywood days was Ron’s work with author Norvell Page on the Warner Bros.’ vehicle, The Spider Returns, and subsequent work on Columbia Pictures’ The Mysterious Pilot and The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock.


“Without a doubt, L. Ron Hubbard is one of the most prolific and influential writers of the twentieth century.”

– Stephen V. Whaley
Professor of English and
Foreign Languages
 

      Yet however varied and prodigious his output, no discussion of L. Ron Hubbard’s role in American fiction through the 1930s is complete without considering his hand in both the reshaping of science fiction and his truly indelible stamp on fantasy. In what amounted to a telling word of introduction from early 1938, he conceded: “I am and have been for years a good craftsman but the very things I possess such as originality and inventiveness are not tools to the magazine trade.” His point was well taken and Hammett, among others, would express similar sentiments. For if any lasting criticism may be leveled at the Pulps, it lay in the fact that editorial policies tended toward strict formula. Earlier, and precisely to break the Pulp mold, Ron had published his full-length historical novel Buckskin Brigades, a highly inventive work for its sympathetic view of the Blackfoot Indians. But as regards the Pulps, which remained his economic bread and butter, he continually sought a more creative outlet.

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The Secret of Treasure Island, one of a number of Hollywood films L. Ron Hubbard helped script, proved one of the most profitable serials.

      That outlet appeared in a most unexpected form when the publishing magnate of Street & Smith approached the adventure-oriented L. Ron Hubbard to help reshape a newly purchased Astounding Science Fiction. Although not at all familiar with the genre, he was intrigued with the proposal: for whereas Astounding had previously focused on improbable machinery–spaceships, ray gunsand robots–Street & Smith had decreed the magazine must take a more human turn with fully realized characters, i.e., “real people.”






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