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Path: utzoo!utcsri!tom
From: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V10 #370
Message-ID: <1434@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 10:34:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1434
Posted: Wed Sep 25 10:34:12 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 12:54:42 EDT
References: <3731@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 75
Summary: 

In article <3731@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA writes:
>From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA>
>
>RJS, discussing Scientology:
>> Postings on scientology are wholly appropriate to the science
>> fiction net, as anyone aware of both that religions history and the
>> history of sf is aware.  Fact: scientology was created by a
>> ... [Several facts follow]
>
>Where does one discover these things?  Everything I know about Scientology
>is by hearsay.
>
>Bard
>-------



One can learn much of scientology's roots by reading John W. 
Campbell's editorials from _Astounding_ (now _Analog_) of the 
late 1930s.  Nicholls' _Science_Fiction_Encylopedia_ (Doubleday) 
has a lengthy, surprisingly broad-minded entry on Scientology and 
of course an entry on pulpmeister Hubbard.  What follows is a 
brief excerpt of a published interview I did with Donald 
Kingsbury (Author of _Courtship_Rite). 


               An Interview with DONALD KINGSBURY
                  Conducted by Robert J. Sawyer

        From the May 1984 issue of SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW


SAWYER:  You were once involved in Scientology.  Or would you 
prefer not to talk about that?

KINGSBURY:  Oh, I have no trouble handling the Scientologists.  
Dianetics, you know, was first presented in _Astounding_.  I sent 
away for the book, actually receiving it before its official 
publication date, and read it in one sitting.  I thought, "that's 
a very interesting psychotherapy technique; I'll try it out on my 
girlfriend."  I went over to her place, had her lie down on the 
couch, and closed the living-room door.  In the middle of the 
session, her mother broke in.  She thought -- well, you know what 
she thought:  we were doing something indecent.  I later married 
that girl, though.  I spent one week of our honeymoon learning 
Dianetics from L. Ron Hubbard; the other week we went to Martha's 
Vineyard.  I began to have reservations about the scientology 
organization.  I was going to start a group in Montreal, but I 
found Hubbard very, very, very difficult to work with.  I always 
knew I didn't agree with him on a lot of things.  He was 
impossible to work with if you didn't agree with him and in that 
way he created scads of heretics.


SAWYER:  You were untimately excommunicated.

KINSBURY:  I taught my mathematics course at McGill in the same 
way they taught Scientology:  as workshops, a very fast, very 
effective method.   I wrote a report on the application and sent 
a copy to Hubbard.  He sent me back a letter saying I had 
plagerized his learning theories.  Hubbard built a great 
apparatus to deal with enemies.  In order to have something for 
the apparatus to do, he goes out and creates enemies.  He has a 
hard time with able people.  When he gets able people around him, 
he excommunicates them.


                               ***

RJS
                                                               
                                                               
                                                               
                                                               
                                                               


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