Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

himself for a feature he was writing on the pulp magazine industry and ended: 'My best to your wife
and kiddies. I am now about to sign off. By the way, forgive the bad copy; I only learned to type a
couple of weeks ago, and can't control the engine sometimes. Addio, John.'[4]
Ron's first story for Astounding, and his first venture into science fiction, was 'The Dangerous
Dimension', published in the July 1938 issue. It was a diverting little tale about a mild-mannered
university professor, Henry Mudge, who works out a philosophic equation enabling him to transport
himself to any part of the universe by thought alone. Teleportation causes him endless difficulties
since every time he thinks about a place he finds himself whisked there with no more than a 'whup!'
By and large, he is remarkably unperturbed, as when he thinks himself to Mars ("Oh dear," thought
Mudge. "Now I've done it!").
'The Dangerous Dimension' was followed later in the year by a three-part novelette, 'The Tramp',
which also dealt with fantastic powers of the mind. The tramp, one 'Doughface Jack', falls from a
train and suffers severe head injuries. After an operation to save his life during which a silver plate
is inserted into his head, he discovers he has the power to heal, or to kill, with a single glance. The
surgeon is so envious of his patient's remarkable new powers that he decides to have the
operation, too, with less happy results.
When, by and by, it became important to promote an image of Ron as one of the world's great
thinkers and philosophers, these two stories would be presented as clear evidence that L. Ron
Hubbard had begun his research into the workings of the mind. Science fiction, it was explained,
was 'merely the method Ron used to develop his philosophy'.[5]
It was a philosophy which was supposedly fully expounded in Excalibur, an unpublished book Ron
was first said to have written in 1938. Modestly described as 'a sensational volume which was a
summation of life based on his analysis of the state of Mankind',[6] much would be heard of this
great work in later years; indeed, it would become a cornerstone of the mythology built around his
life. It was claimed that the book derived from Ron's 'discovery' that the primary law of life was to
survive, although, naturally, the part played by 'his explorations, journeys and experiences in the
four corners of the earth, amongst all kinds of men, was crucial'.[7]
The first six people to read the manuscript were said to have been so overwhelmed by the contents
that they went out of their minds. Curiously, however, few of Ron's fellow writers were aware of the