“I have never read L. Ron Hubbard and I never will. He is the founder of Scientology. I have heard it said that he got into the scientology scam because he was failing as a writer.”
He was writing sci fi for a long time before he established his “religion,” which I heard he did on a bet.
From Hubbard bio:
Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”
I had read Hubbard wrote some bad science fiction but wasn't able to make enough money to support himself. In addition to his bad writing he needed scams that cheated people out of their money and he was also arrested for petty theft.
Other science fiction writers knew Hubbard was a liar, a thief and a scam artist.
De Camp wrote to Asimov, “Don't say you haven't been warned. Bob [Robert Heinlein] thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war. I think that's fertilizer, that he always was that way, but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act. What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act.”
Scientology made Hubbard rich. He then lived the last years of his life alone in paranoid delusion trusting no one and he died of mysterious circumstances probably murdered by David Miscavige or some of his other assistants.