Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

narrative, akin to literary psychoanalysis, charts the disintegration of an academic who writes an
article debunking the existence of spirits and demons and is punished by being dragged into a
nightmare of black magic and hallucinations. In contrast, 'Typewriter In The Sky' was a typical
Hubbard swashbuckler about a character called Mike de Wolfe who finds himself trapped in the
past as the unwilling victim of a science fiction writer named Horace Hackett. Transported to the
Spanish Main, de Wolfe is saddled with the implausible name of Miguel Saint Raoul Maria
Gonzales Sebastian de Mendoza y Toledo Francisco Juan Tomaso Guerrero de Brazo y Leon de
Lobo and is required to duel with English sea dog Tom Bristol for the hand of the fair Lady Marion,
'flame-headed, imperious and as lovely as any statue from Greece'. It was an ingenious little tale,
but hardly great literature, particularly since the protagonists were given to uttering lines like 'God's
breath, milord, you jest!' and 'By gad, he's got spunk!' or even 'Peel your peepers!'
Final Blackout was a novel which many science-fiction fans considered Hubbard's finest work and
led to hopeful comparisons with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. (When it was published in hardback
later, Ron contrived, unsuccessfully, to appear self-effacing in a jacket note: 'I cannot bring myself to
believe that Final Blackout, as so many polls and such insist, is one of the ten greatest stories ever
published.')
Serialized in the April, May and June issues of Astounding, Final Blackout precipitated furious
controversy in fan magazines and bitter accusations that it was Communist or Fascist propaganda.
The story was set in a Europe laid waste by generations of war and populated only by marauding
bands of renegade soldiers. Leading a brigade of 'unkillables', the hero, identified only as the
'Lieutenant', fights his way to England, where he establishes a benign military dictatorship until he
is overthrown by his former commanding officers, with the backing of the United States.
It was a peculiarly grim and apposite story to be published in the spring of 1940. Viewed from the
United States, the war in Europe seemed like a prelude to Armageddon, the potential destruction of
civilized life under the heel of the jackboot. While American liberals were campaigning for positive
action from the government to aid the Allies in the fight against Fascism, the anti-war neutralist
lobby was equally vociferous. Partisans of both left and right read political significance into The
Final Blackout: it was pro-war, anti-war, Communist or anti-Communist, depending on the reader's
political inclinations.
Even Ron's friends could not agree about his intentions. Ron was a member of a war-game circle
which had been started by Fletcher Pratt, a naval historian who also enjoyed writing science fiction.
Using scale models of real warships made from balsa wood, they re-enacted naval battles on the
floor of the living-room in Pratt's New York apartment until the group became too large and it was
necessary to transfer the battleground to a hired hall on East 59th Street. While the balsa battles
were being fought, they often discussed the war and its attendant politics.
'Hubbard gave a varied impression of himself,' recalled L. Sprague de Camp, who was also a
member of the war-game circle. 'Some thought him a Fascist because of the authoritarian tone of
certain stories. But one science-fiction writer, then an idealistic left-liberal, was convinced that
Hubbard had profound liberal convictions. To others, Hubbard expressed withering disdain for
politics and politicians, saying about the imminence of war: "Me, fight for a political system?"[15]
There was certainly no doubt that Ron was anti-German, for on 16 May he wrote a letter to the FBI in
Washington on his exotic personalized stationery featuring his initials and a charging cavalryman:
'Gentlemen; May I bring to your attention an individual whose Nazi activities, in time of national
emergency if not at present, might constitute him a menace to the state?'
This luckless individual was a German steward at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York whose