I know, I shouldn't do it, and I'm sorry. That's not an apology to you, by the way: That's an apology to me.

Somehow or other I got hooked on all the delicious Scientology-bashing going on in the way-too-generous Defamer coverage of the whole Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes thing. I say thing because you can't possibly call it an engagement, not without inviting me to laugh at you. Those two are "enamored" of each other like I'm anorexic.

Tom, let me give you the opposite advice from that which Cartman once gave his dog: Be gay! Just be gay already. There. Was that so hard? Be gay so I don't have to read about you anymore. Thanks.

As for Scientology, how does it continue when Harlan Ellison's already explained its humble origins?

Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for chrissakes!

I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers. L. Ron Hubbard was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.

. . .

We were sitting around one night. ... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

Interviewer: He is also supposed to have said on that same night: "The question is not how to make a million dollars, but how to keep it."

Ellison: Right. And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stole a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior. I mean he really believed that. He was also very nervous when I was in his office because I was a Jew. You know, he was afraid maybe I would spring horns or something.

. . .

So science fiction fans picked it up, they began proselytizing, he started making money, when he had made enough money he was able to spread out a little more, then he got more cuckoos, you know, pre-Charlie Manson assholes that had no place else to go, and he began talking to these loons as if "Dianetics" really meant something. Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".

Now, they've gotten so big that they own property all over the country, and it is impossible to stop it. They infiltrated the FBI, they infiltrated the tax department, ... the funny thing is, Ron Hubbard and I still occasionally communicate with each other. Every once in a while, a couple or three times a year, we exchange letters. And I write to him, you know, and I say, "Hey Ron, when is this bullshit going to cease? These cuckoos are really driving me crazy! They come around the house with pamphlets!" And he writes me back, and he says, "It's the good work, it's the good work."

It's all very funny stuff. He was going to write a new story for me for the last "Dangerous Visions", but I guess he got too busy counting his money. I don't know.

(Note to the skeptics: Yeah, it's taken from a usenet posting, but it's also referenced [albeit with dead link] on Ellison's homepage, which lends credibility. Plus, doesn't it just sound like him? Come on, it totally sounds like Harlan Ellison. I, for one, believe.)

Friend of L. Ron or no, I used to wonder how Ellison could just laugh off a pseudoreligion that commits horrors like this, but I think this bit--

then he got more cuckoos, you know, pre-Charlie Manson assholes that had no place else to go

--serves notice that in the battle between Ellison's compassion for the downtrodden and his disgust for the idiotic, disgust won out.

Disgust is certainly closer to what I'm feeling now, after wasting all that time reading about Tom Cruise. But there, maybe I can just blame it all on science.

UPDATE: My work is complete.

'PRE-CLEAR' UPDATE: "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it." (Much love and thanks to Ith, Fabulous Sci-Con Babe for the New Millenium, for that link.) Bits like this are why I would do Harlan even if he were 91--he's profane, sure, but he is profanely awesome, and he has a habit of saying out loud just what you were thinking anyway, and he tells stories like you only wish he could.

Which reminds me, buy his books. Make Harlan happy, and yourself too. That retrospective on the Amazon page is a helluva deal for $16.47 new, and it'll keep you entertained for weeks. Not a bad place to start acquainting yourself with a gifted writer.

Posted by Ilyka at June 23, 2005 01:14 AM in trivia