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Posted By : cussedness - 3/4/2008 3:13 PM

Three weeks of back to back emergencies and I'm worn out.

I may have mis-judged the ire level of scientologists when I came out of the closet about an incident back in 1986, re-posted an article on my website that provoked the the incident back in 86, and found my earthlink account blocked for an unspecified TOS violation.

I am now switched over to Verizon. Use the gmail address to get hold of me. If you sent subs to my gmail address, then they are safe. If you sent them to my earthlink address, please send them again.

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Posted By : Lyn - 3/4/2008 5:04 PM

I read the article you wrote and didn't see anything untoward. What was the issue?

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Posted By : cussedness - 3/4/2008 5:10 PM

They had several of them. They felt that I was implying that Hubbard was equivalent to a rapist. That my relating what happened when I was a kid was libeling them. and they did not like the fact that I separated Hubbard's fiction from his creation of scientology.

I felt then and I still feel that the article was harmless. That their reaction was way over the top and tilting at imagined slights. They seemed to see some kind of hostile undertone to what I wrote, which was not there.

And I was not going to apologize for something I did not do based upon their imagined slights.

Posted By : crystalwizard - 3/4/2008 8:07 PM

Their reaction WAS way over the top, but you're dealing with religious fanatics. Rabid religious fanatics.

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Posted By : Lyn - 3/5/2008 6:22 PM

Way over the top. Your point, as I read it, was that we shouldn't judge on hearsay - you wanted to read Hubbard's book without worrying about what people thought of him as a person. That seemed a positive point. Oh well, people will read into things their own agenda all the time. Shake it off, I suppose.

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Posted By : cussedness - 3/6/2008 3:35 AM

My daughter had heard all the stories about what happened to me during the years that I was doing non-fiction; so she twisted my arm about posting the article again with the intro. It's been a strange feeling going back over those days.

I have another article going up on Friday. It's from 87 and also appeared in Thrust.

Posted By : MichaelEhart - 3/6/2008 4:00 PM

They certainly are touchy, aren't they?
You know, I lived for a decade in Bremerton WA (still only 30 minutes away) and even in the 90's there were still folks that remembered Hubbard, most of them positively. The house he lived in is still there, an ugly brown clapboard thing facing the shipyard. I think his family still owns it. I'm pretty sure that the cabin he owned at South Colby is gone, but the little grocery store that gave him credit when he was a young struggling writer is still there.
Most of his pulp output was written in one of those two houses. The Dianetics thing came later.
The fairest thing that can be said about him was that he was an unusual guy, with a vivid imagination. Not any kind of drawback for a fiction writer.

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Posted By : cussedness - 3/6/2008 5:12 PM

I always enjoyed his fiction. I WILL always enjoy his fiction.

I also don't think that Hubbard should be blamed for the excesses of his followers. When something gets big enough, regardless of whether it's a religion or a philosophy or a corporation, people attach themselves to the founder for many reasons, and many of those many reasons are totally self-serving.

Scientology became a monster. However, I seriously doubt that Hubbard knew a lot of what was going on.

There are several authors that i don't like as people, but i read their books because they write extremely well and I enjoy them.

No matter what one does or says, in the final analysis, the writing stands alone.

Posted By : MichaelEhart - 3/6/2008 5:45 PM

Yeah, Fear is undeniably a classic, and may have the best opening chapter ever written. And Typewriter in the Sky is a start-to-finish hoot, with some parts just plain fall-down funny.
I cared far less for his last works, though.