Hubbard wrote many stories and novellas that were published in aviation, sports, and pulp magazines. Between 1933 and 1938, Hubbard wrote 138 novels, both science fiction and adventure. His first hardcover novel was published in 1937, titled
Buckskin Brigades. He co-wrote a 15-part movie serial
The Secret of Treasure Island (1938). Literature critics have cited
Final Blackout, set in a war-ravaged future Europe, and
Fear, a psychological horror story, as the best examples of Hubbard's pulp fiction. Among his published stories were
Sea Fangs,
The Carnival of Death,
Man-Killers of the Air, and
The Squad that Never Came Back, which he wrote under numerous pseudonyms. He became a well-known author in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He also published westerns and adventure stories. His agent at one time was the well known science fiction guru Forrest Ackerman. According to friend and colleague A.E. van Vogt, Hubbard wrote:
"...about a million words a year, straight on to the typewriter at incredible speed. My guess was that he typed at about seventy words a minute. It just poured out...I have seen typists working at that speed, but never a writer. I was in his apartment a couple of times when he said he had to finish a story and he would sit typing steadily for twenty minutes without a break and without looking up. That would have been totally impossible for me."
Unable to elicit interest from mainstream publishers or medical professionals, Hubbard turned to the science fiction editor John W. Campbell, who had for years published Hubbard's science fiction. Hubbard wrote the
Ole Doc Methuselah series for Campbell's
Astounding Science Fiction, and in 1949 published the first article on Dianetics in the magazine. Campbell referred to Dianetics in the preface of the article as a "scientific method" of mental therapy.
In works such as "Masters of Sleep," the story features "a mad psychiatrist, Doctor Dyhard, who persists in rejecting Dianetics after all his abler colleagues have accepted it believes in prefrontal lobotomies for everyone". Most of Hubbard's output thereafter was related to Dianetics or Scientology. During Hubbard's transition from science fiction to Dianetics, his story
The Professor was a Thief was adapted and aired on the
Dimension X radio show, whose writers included Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein and Kurt Vonnegut. Hubbard did not make a major return to non-Dianetics fiction until the 1980s.
Members of the science fiction community held varying opinions about Hubbard's Dianetics work. Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, criticized Dianetics' unscientific aspects, and veteran author and literature PhD Jack Williamson described Dianetics as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology", likening it to a scam. Campbell and novelist A. E. van Vogt, on the other hand, enthusiastically embraced Dianetics. Campbell became Hubbard's treasurer, and van Vogt...convinced his wife's health had been transformed for the better by auditing...interrupted his writing career to run the first Los Angeles Dianetics center. Joseph A. Winter M.D., who supported Hubbard, submitted papers outlining the principles and methodology of Dianetic therapy to the journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry, but they were rejected. Although Campbell was initially supportive of Dianetics, he reversed his position in 1951.
In April 1950, Hubbard and several others established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey to coordinate work related for the forthcoming publication of a book on Dianetics. The book, entitled
The Modern Science of Mental Health, was published in May 1950 by Hermitage House, whose head was also on the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. With
Dianetics, Hubbard introduced the concept of "auditing", a two-person question-and-answer therapy that focused on painful memories, referred to as engrams. Hubbard claimed that Dianetics could cure physical illnesses and increase intelligence. In his introduction to
Dianetics, Hubbard called his discoveries "a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the arch".
Dianetics sold 150,000 copies within a year of publication. Reviews were almost entirely hostile. In September 1950,
The New York Times published a cautionary statement by the American Psychological Association which stated that the claims of Dianetics were not supported by empirical evidence, recommending against the use of the techniques described therein until they had scientific evidence to support their use.
Consumer Reports, in an August 1951 assessment of Dianetics, called it "the basis for a new cult", noted its lack of modesty, and pointed out that it made generalizations without backing them up with evidence or facts.
Branch offices of the Dianetics Foundation opened in five other US cities before the end of 1950. In August of that year, amid public pressure to show evidence of the book's claims, Hubbard arranged to present a Clear (the end product of Dianetics) in the Shrine Auditorium. He presented a physics student, Sonya Bianca, who failed to answer several questions testing her memory and analytical abilities. Many of the Dianetics practices folded within a year of establishment and Hubbard abandoned the Foundation, denouncing a number of his former associates to the FBI as communists.
What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown. Sam Moskowitz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money. Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors. According to
The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money. Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W. Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy. After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951, Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and IRS, expressing interest in starting a religion.