I found it awful the motives assigned to DRGIII when he wrote Original Sin. I liked the book and even if I hadn't,I would never had said such a thing. I didn't see it. I found the comments to be racist. I still think those that said such comments should have been banned from here.
Even the very worst Star Trek novel I've ever read (maybe a Marshak/Culbreath opus?) was far better than "The Novel I Refuse To Mention By Name." And DRG's works, as I recall, are far from being the worst ST novels. (And if anybody wants to know what "The Novel I Refuse To Mention By Name" is, PM me a nondisclosure, and I'll PM you the title. I don't want to unintentionally pitch the opus in question to curiosity seekers; that would drive up the sales of that monumental waste of paper and ink.)
I still remember when I was the impetus who summoned Dayton Ward back to this forum after nearly six years of inactivity! https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/tos...ard-review-thread.280197/page-6#post-11628778
The Atlanta Marriot (as itself) was first seen in MANHUNTER I believe. I will never again hear Iron Butterfly without the image of Tom Noonan being blown away popping into my brain…
Except that given that L. Ron Hubbard built up an organization that has been known to buy up copies of his books at retail, and feed them back into the supply chain, to boost sales numbers, leaving any of his works unmentioned would be pointless. Now, of course, we've both brought down the Wrath of Scientology upon us. I give TrekBBS maybe a week to survive. If we're lucky. At any rate, while I was fortunate enough to have been spared any of LRH's stuff, I can't imagine that it could be any worse than a novel in which the protagonist starts out as an unmitigated cad, the most mercantile nation-state currently in existence is portrayed as black-hat villains who go to enormous expense for the sake of spite, and the secondary protagonist is killed off, just for the sake of being killed off, by an author who obviously thinks he knows more about space suits (and about the difference between an intravehicular suit and an extravehicular suit) than he actually does. And if you've read the opus in question, and recognize it from the previous paragraph, please do not mention it by author or title.
Given that for most people Scientology is an irrelevant cult, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
I don't know about today, but they used be pretty aggressive about protecting their messiah's literary reputation. As I recall, back when I was working on The New York Review of Science Fiction, we could count on a deluge of angry letters if we even suggested that Hubbard was NOT one of the greatest SF writers of Golden Age.
I doubt Scientology is going after the TrekBBS, but they are hardly irrelevant: https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2019/investigations/scientology-clearwater-real-estate/
I still love the South Park episode about Scientology. And then they went so far as to reveal the 'big' secret about what they believe (which I guess you aren't even told about until you're deep in the organization). I loved the caption "scientologists really believe this" or something to that effect. Then of course Stan at the end saying "go ahead, sue me", basically goading Scientology to sue the show (I wonder if they ever tried). One thing I love about South Park is nobody is safe. In fact, at this point, if South Park hasn't made fun of your group then you're probably offended. "Hey, our group isn't good enough to be mocked?"
I haven't read that, but I read his Mission Earth series (which was in my high school library for some odd reason), which definitely wasn't the worst thing I've ever read.
I don't know if you ever went in a Dollar Tree in the early 90s, but it was not uncommon to find vast quantities of LRH novels in paperback and hardcover. I bought Final Blackout (which was okay, I guess) and the Mission Earth series. I didn't get more than 100 pages into Battlefield Earth. It was bad. I remember it being... adequate? It was functional, if boring, though I bailed in the fourth or fifth book.
When I worked as a shelver in the university library in college, I was surprised by what an extensive collection of Hubbard novels they had compared to other authors.
Circa 1992, a clever acquisitions librarian could have stocked that entire Hubbard section for less than twenty bucks.
There are still tons of them about. Where I used to live, I think a quarter of the book aisle at the Job Lot was Hubbard novels.
Finally. I claim no special sleuthing powers but I knew if I was patient, you'd eventually provide enough information to track this down, which I've done.