| Abstract: | L. Ron Hubbard created in Scientology an immense landscape of alternative worlds, realities, and possibilities. Scientology cosmology, mythology, and eschatology are inescapably linked to galactic events and Hubbard's retelling of human history is replete with science-fiction tropes – many of which found popularity in the early science-fiction tradition to which he belonged. In his therapeutic and religious teachings, Hubbard proposed a complex narrative that re-defined the essence of self and society in relation to the cosmos. For Scientologists, the fantastic becomes mundane as they position themselves within a vast and heavy quest to reshape themselves, the rest of humanity, and, for some, the entire universe. Understood within the science-fiction context from which Scientology emerged, one can better understand the grand nature of Hubbard's proposals as belonging to a specific tradition within the genre – namely, space opera. Consequently, this article analyses Hubbard's propositions using space-opera concepts, and argues that Hubbard re-defined a unique tradition in the course of creating a new reality. |
