“What is generally missed,” L. Ron Hubbard once remarked, “is that my writing financed research.” 

April.12.12

Volunteer: Luis Lugo

L. Ronald Hubbard, Writer.

“What is generally missed,” L. Ron Hubbard once remarked, “is that my writing financed research.” Nevertheless and notwithstanding all that ensued from his research, L. Ron Hubbard’s literary legacy is of a stature unto itself. Having published a full fifteen million words between 1929 and 1941, the name L. Ron Hubbard was virtually synonymous with popular fiction through the 1930s and ’40s. In point of fact, as friend and fellow author Frederik Pohl proclaimed: “The instant Ron’s stories appeared on the newsstands, they were part of every fan’s cultural heritage.” And given the volume of Mr. Hubbard’s output through these years—more than two hundred stories and novels spanning all popular genres, including mystery, western, adventure, fantasy, science fiction and even romance—that cultural heritage was indeed rich.

Appropriately, Mr. Hubbard’s primary outlet through these years was the pulps. Named for the pulpwood stock on which they were printed, the pulps were easily the most popular literary publication of their day. In fact, with some 30 million regular readers—a quarter of the American population—their impact was quite unrivaled until the advent of television. But if the pulps were first and foremost a popular vehicle, they were by no means without literary merit. Among others to launch their careers in the likes of Argosy, Astounding Science Fiction, Black Mask and Five-Novels Monthly were Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein. It was not for nothing, then, that Mr. Hubbard would fondly look back on these “dear old days” to tell of evenings spent with the great Dash Hammett, Edgar “Tarzan” Burroughs and Mr. Pulps himself, Arthur J. Burks. But if Mr. Hubbard would not particularly speak of his own status, it was no less legendary.

As a matter of fact, recalled Pohl, “Nobody was doing the sort of thing he did any better…colorful, exciting, continually challenging.” The case in point is L. Ron Hubbard’s full-length novel, Buckskin Brigades. Acclaimed as the first work to offer an accurate portrait of the Blackfeet Indians, Buckskin Brigades was all that Pohl described and more. A “decidedly rare type of romance,” declared the New York Times, and pointed to the fact it presented the first real reversal of what comprised a fairly ethnocentric cliché, i.e., the Native American as a murderous savage. Indeed, as Council Members of the Blackfeet Nation were to later declare, “Never have our morals and ethics been presented with such clarity.” Additionally marking Buckskin Brigades as unique is the fact it once again rose to the bestseller lists some fifty years after original publication.