Volume 5, Issue 5, page 3
IANETICS first came to 1101,11' the attention of this
writer with a series of
editorials written by
John W. Campbell Jr. on the
subject of recalls, and published in several succeeding
issues of ASTOUNDING. This
was during the early months
of 1950. One such comment predicted something startling in
the near future.
And that "something start- Brush
ling" hit the newsstands on
April 10 -- in the form of the
most atrocious cover ever to
be used on this pre-eminent
leader of the science-fiction
field. Featured on the May
issue was the ugliest painting
of a "science-fiction character" from a planet of wolf-men
that ever graced a "bug-eyed
monster" type of cover, illustrating a fiction series
and in no way related to the
subject. But the word "Dianetics" was emblazoned across
this unfortunate picture. This
"billboard" genesis later was
used with telling effect
against the theories of L. Ron
Hubbard who originated them,
by detractors who loudly and
ubiquitously called them " fiction-science " from the fact
it had appeared originally in
a science-fiction magazine.
What happened n e x t was
more of a landslide than a
simple case of snowballing.
Within a matter of days, literally thousands of persons
who don't read such magazines
had been introduced to those new and revolutionary concepts of how the mind works
to produce aberrated actions