Pern demographics

This was a collection of pages relating to Anne McCaffrey's stories about Pern. It was the most visited section of my website. It was, but then in August 2004 the author accepted an 'L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts' at the annual L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Awards. The accompanying press release and photos can be found at a Locus newspage. Could you take a look at that first please?

For those who don't know 'Galaxy Press' are the publishers for Hubbard's fiction and 'Author Services Inc' are his literary agents. Both are part of the Church of Scientology, which sponsors the Awards.

The Awards were set up in 1984 at the behest of L Ron Hubbard because he wanted to give something back to the literary genre that had supported him in his early years as a pulp fiction writer. They were continued after his death because his word is law to the present leadership of the cult he founded. No, the money doesn't come from a 'trust fund' or similar, it comes from the cult.

This does not mean that Scientology is popular amongst SF fans (of whom I am one). The Church of Scientology (CoS) is best known in fandom nowadays for the "Battlefield Earth" movie, for bulk buying its guru's books and recycling them to give him 'bestseller' status and for treating fans as a marketing opportunity.

So if an eccentric UFO religious sect wants to give money away to aspiring writers, what's my problem?

My problem is that the CoS is a nasty totalitarian cult that ruins lives, breaks up families and corrupts whatever it touches. These Awards are another of its 'front groups' aimed at making it respectable and thereby enabling it to snare more recruits. Science Fiction fandom and authors should not, in my view, be associated with it.

Before you ask, I really, really don't have to spell out the difference between 'religious bigot' and 'whistleblower' to intelligent book readers do I? (sigh) I guess I do...

The Church of Scientology is an organisation. It has bank accounts, members, owns property. It can and does engage in child abuse, blackmail, fraud and all kinds of unethical behaviour. Claiming to be a religion does not exempt it from criticism, any more than the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests should be condoned and concealed.

Scientology is an applied religious philosophy. It owns nothing, doesn't 'do' anything. Many scientologists are decent people who have left the CoS in disgust and I have no quarrel with them, indeed I'm happy to help them out when they are persecuted by the CoS for being heretics.

You think I'm exaggerating? Then let Astra and Zoe Woodcraft tell you what life was like for them as children inside the cult. There are hundreds of webpages detailing the crimes of the CoS out there, no excuses people, go out and read a few. You'll find more links on this website.

Thanks for reading this far. I hope you now understand why I could no longer host the pages that were here.

---

For the rest of my Home pages, press the above button.

FastCounter by bCentral