L. Ron Hubbard

             “Who is the greatest writer of all time?”

             The question took me completely by surprised. I was over at my friend’s house having a couple beers and talking about “The Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan when he suddenly throws that at me. I took a sip of my beer to give myself time to think. King would probably be the name that pops into many people’s minds at this point. Maybe Shakespeare, they still study his plays in school.

             “I’m not sure. There are so many talented writers, it really is too hard to pick one.”

             “L. Ron Hubbard.”

             I nearly choked on the sip of beer I had just taken.

             “Hubbard, seriously? Yeah, Battlefield Earth is good, but that is the only one I think is any good.”

             “Hubbard created a religion dude. Think about it: he is a sci-fi fantasy writer, and he creates a religion.”

             “You mean that Scientology cult?”

             “Call it a cult if you want, but in many ways they are more powerful than the Catholic Church.”

             “So you think simply because he got a bunch of morons to believe some made up crap that he is the greatest writer ever?”

             “A s**t ton of morons and just take a minute to think about this. Here is this guy that writes science fiction and fantasy and he suddenly says this is the holy truth. He publishes a bunch of books on it and suddenly people start believing. They don’t go ‘dude, this is just another of your sci-fi fantasy stories’, no they buy into it. They kneel down and worship, well whatever they worship, but the point is his religion has thousands if not millions of followers. If only half the rumors about the kidnappings, brainwashing and other stuff is true, it is still crazy.”

             I took another sip of my beer as I tried to process what he was saying.

             “So since he made a religion he should be considered the greatest writer of all time?”

             “Yeah, exactly. Yeah, King has his fans and Shakespeare is super famous, but neither of them ever wrote something so good that they had thousands buy into it. It is like the Orwells guy’s radio broadcast.”

             “You mean the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.”

             “Yeah, that one. Had people panicking, even heard some people killed themselves over a radio broadcast. Hubbard has topped that by having people who don’t even believe in Scientology doing what him and his church wants.”

             “Don’t tell me you are thinking of joining them?”

             “Hell no, they are a bunch of nutters.”

             I finished my beer and grabbed another one.

             “Michael Moorcock, now that guy has a name that just screams porn star, don’t you think?”