Maburg Journal of Rleigion
Marco Frenschkowski
University of Mainz, Germany

Hubbard's literary output (fiction)
As is well known, Hubbard started his career as a writer in all genres of popular literature. In the Thirties he wrote mainly adventure fiction, aviation stories, travel stories, but also mysteries, western, romance, and even some love stories. Later he concentrated on fantasy and especially science fiction. Many of his yarns touch religious aspects of man: his desire for transcendence and immortality, his struggle for happiness and freedom, his fascination with the starry heavens, his wonder about his own future. None of this fiction is "religious" in a traditional sense of the word, nevertheless is deserves some attention in the light of his later developments. Also in his later years - after founding Dianetics and Scientology - he turned back to the SF market with some major novels. I start with a few remarks on these texts as they are almost completely unknown in Germany.