Galaxy Press and CofS

[RossFW]

I was in LA recently, and saw a display of L Ron Hubbards Sci-Fi books, published by Galaxy Press.

A quick look inside saw that an extensive Bio was included- remarkably not mentioning him as the founder of Scientology.

The books also included a mailer to subsribe to the series of pulp-sci fi books.

A quick internet search and- guess who owns Galaxy Press....................

[Akhenaten]

My guess is a scam masquerading as a cult masquerading as a religion.

[dudalb]

Not exactly a scam, but the books are definently over priced.You are paying Ten Bucks for a 50 page short story with 40 pages of introductions and afterwords prasing the great genius Ron Hubbard as a great writer.
It's a lame attempt to
A.Cash in on the current revival of interest in the Pulp Fiction of the 30's and
B.A sort of attempt to get people intersted in Hubbard and the CO$ by carefully hiding..at first..what is going on here.
Any objective introduction to Hubbard could not avoid talking about his career as a founder of the Co$.That they go so far to avoid it should tell you something.
And the books are a ripoff. Compare Ten Bucks for 40 to 50 pages of story in large type to what you get with the current Reprints of the Doc Savage,The Shadow, and the Avenger pulps put out by Anthony Tollin's Sanctum press;For 12.95 you get two complete novels ..about four times the actuall content of the Ten Buck Galaxy ripoffs. And the writing is much,much,much, better. Hubbard was a lousy writer even by pulp standards.
I bought one of the books because it was one of Hubbard's Westerns out of curiosity as to whether he was a better writer in other genres then he was in Science Fiction;he was not.

[Akhenaten]

Sorry. I was a bit ambiguous.

My description was meant to imply the whole of the organisation, and not this book selling venture, which is exactly as you describe it.

[dudalb]

Sorry. I was a bit ambiguous.

My description was meant to imply the whole of the organisation, and not this book selling venture, which is exactly as you describe it.

BTW can't resist plugging the Shadow stories from Santcum Press. The Main writer from 1931 to 1945 was Walter S.Gibson ("Maxwell Grant" was a house name) who is best known under his own name as a Historian of Magic, and was a friend of our own James Randi..who gets a mention in a couple of the introductions to the Shadow novels . This series, as are the Doc Savage reprints, is a very good deal as opposed to the Galacy ripoffs.
And Gibson's Shadow is vastly different then the radio shadow. He has no supernatural power to cloud men's minds, but depends on his wits and a lot of stage magicians tricks ..and his Colt 45 Automatics..to defeat his enemies.Gibson's tales are MUCH darker then the radio show or the 1994 movie; at times the Shadow is almost a Depression ere version of The PUnisher. A fun read.

http://shadowsanctum.com/