Writing during the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction

Algis Budrys, renowned author and editor reflects on L. Ron Hubbard as one of the authors who shaped the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction in the 30's and 40's:

L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) was born in the American West at a time when the Frontier ethic still placed a heavy responsibility on a man. The responsbility was to survive without being a burden on others; to be a positive force; to not merely survive, but to contribute. Nothing said you couldn't have fun in the process, and there is plenty of evidence that Hubbard loved taking the world apart to see how it ticked, and putting parts of it back together in ways that baffled some and often afforded him enormous merriment.

Even in his earliest teens, he displayed an omnivorous thirst for information, at first hand and from books. That's not rare in someone who'll be a writer, but his intensity was. Too, his personal circumstances were such that he could explore sea and land personally, while also coming into contact with some unusually effective teachers. He made observations and formed opinions that were not always usual, and developed a manner that dared you to dispute them. If you put up a good argument, so much the better; if you couldn't, so be it. Either way, both of you had had the opportunity to test some feature of the universe, that wonderful box full of marvelous toys and elegant instruments.

Something led him to share his discoveries, and his delights in them, and his occasional consternations at what he found there. He became an entertainer; specifically, a writer of popular "pulp" fiction. Soon enough, even more specifically, a writer of speculative fiction.

Science fiction and fantasy are where the ultimate speculations can go and turn into dramas. The supposed worlds they embody are based on our common understanding of reality, as they must be, but they can be taken apart and put into unique configurations that amaze, and yet work in human terms... work elegantly, sometimes, to the edification and delight of the reader.

All his life as a writer, Hubbard devoted constant attention to making his writing more effective; to reaching larger and larger audiences, and to making them want more of his work. He wanted to know why people read so avidly for "entertainment" and perhaps he wanted to know why he himself was so strongly drawn to provide it.

He concluded that underneath it all, the audience wants to learn something; that storytelling is not pure diversion. Teaching is essential to entertainment, and background gives meaning to action. Oh, you had better not preach, and you had better not stop the action for an expository paragraph or two cribbed from some encyclopedia. That would lose your audience. But your story had to be about something, or why should the reader care to enjoy it?


Many years after his rise to fame as a writer, Hubbard, on looking back on how it all worked, dictated a few paragraphs on "Message." Here's some of what he had to say:

"Successful works of art have a message.

It may be implicit or implied, emotional, conceptual or literal, inferred or stated. But a message nonetheless.

This applies to any form of art: paintings, sculpture, poetry, writing, music, architecture, photography, cine, any art form that depends on art, even advertising brochures and window displays.

Art is for the receiver.

If he understands it, he likes it. If it confuses him, he may ignore it or detest it.
It is not enough that the creator of the work understands it; those who receive it must.

Many elements and much expertise go into the creating of successful works of art. Dominant among them is message for this integrates the whole and brings comprehension and appreciation to those for whom it is intended... a message is fundamental to understanding."

This view is guaranteed to raise some hackles among established arbiters of these matters. It is, however, a view promulgated by one of the most successful communicators we have ever seen, by someone who was a widely popular writer and top producer while still in his twenties, and whose final work, the ten-volume Mission Earth dekalogy, legitimately rode best-seller lists, attracting enthusiastic readers by the multiple tens of thousands.

Hubbard knew how to reach them. And he knew how to teach it.