Scientology started out as a joke.

Harlan Ellison & Robin Williams discuss LRH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9AGVARpqdk

http://www.blondenonbeliever.com/2011/10/scientology-started-as-joke.html
Excerpt:

I recently interviewed the acclaimed science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, who told me he was at the birth of Scientology. At a meeting in New York City of a sci-fi writers’ group called the Hydra Club, Hubbard was complaining to L. Sprague de Camp and the others about writing for a penny a word. “Lester del Rey then said half-jokingly, ‘What you really ought to do is create a religion because it will be tax-free,’ and at that point everyone in the room started chiming in with ideas for this new religion. So the idea was a Gestalt that Ron caught on to and assimilated the details. He then wrote it up as ‘Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind’ and sold it to John W. Campbell, Jr., who published it in Astounding Science Fiction in 1950.”

Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! ... We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said “This bullshit's got to stop!” He says, “I gotta get money.” He says, “I want to get rich.” And somebody said, “Why don't you invent a new religion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_M._Kornbluth
Excerpt:
Cyril M. Kornbluth (July 23, 1923 – March 21, 1958) was an American science fiction author and a notable member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner and Jordan Park. The "M" in Kornbluth's name may have been in tribute to his wife, Mary Byers;^[1] Frederik Pohl confirmed the lack of any actual middle name in at least one interview.^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Sprague_de_Camp
Excerpt:
Lyon Sprague de Camp (November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester
Excerpt:
Alfred Bester (December 18, 1913 – September 30, 1987) was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. Though successful in all these fields, he is probably best remembered today for his work as a science fiction author, and as the winner of the first Hugo Award in 1953 for his novel The Demolished Man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_del_Rey
Excerpt:
Lester del Rey (June 2, 1915 – May 10, 1993) was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey was the author of many of the Winston Science Fiction juvenile SF series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurians
Excerpts:

1) Cyril Kornbluth

2) Political tendencies
At the time the Futurians were formed, Donald Wollheim was strongly attracted by communism and believed that followers of science fiction "should actively work for the realization of the scientific world-state as the only genuine justification for their activities and existence".^[4] It was to this end that Wollheim formed the Futurians, and many of its members were in some degree interested in the political applications of science fiction.
Hence the group included supporters of Trotskyism, like Judith Merril and others who would have been deemed far left for the era (Frederik Pohl became a member of the Communist Party in 1936, but later quit in 1939). On the other hand several members were political moderates or apolitical, and in the case of James Blish arguably right-wing. Damon Knight in The Futurians indicates that Blish at that time felt Fascism was interesting in theory, if repellent as it was then being practiced. More solid evidence is that Blish admired the work of Oswald Spengler.
Pohl, in his autobiography, The Way the Future Was, said Wollheim voted for Republican Presidential Candidate Alfred Landon in 1936.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
Excerpts:
1) Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard (and often referred to by his initials, LRH), was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology.

2) Although he was best known for his fantasy and science fiction stories, Hubbard wrote in a wide variety of genres, including adventure fiction, aviation, travel, mysteries, westerns and even romance.^[64] Hubbard knew and associated with writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp and A. E. van Vogt.^[65] His first full-length novel, Buckskin Brigades, was published in 1937.^[66] He became a "highly idiosyncratic" writer of science fiction after being taken under the wing of editor John W. Campbell,^[67] who published many of Hubbard's short stories and also serialized a number of well-received novelettes that Hubbard wrote for Campbell's magazines Unknown and Astounding. These included Fear, Final Blackout and Typewriter in the Sky.^[68

http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pulpfiction/introduction/What-Is-Pulp-Fiction.php
Excerpt:

What Is Pulp Fiction

Term originated from the magazines of the first half of the 20th century which were printed on cheap "pulp" paper and published fantastic, escapist fiction for the general entertainment of the mass audiences. The pulp fiction era provided a breeding ground for creative talent which would influence all forms of entertainment for decades to come. The hardboiled detective and science fiction genres were created by the freedom that the pulp fiction magazines provided.

Pulp Fiction is a term used to describe a huge amount of creative writing available to the American public in the early nineteen-hundreds. Termed "pulp magazines" because of the low quality paper used between the covers, these publications proliferated in the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties to the point where they blanketed newsstands in just about every popular fiction genre of the time.
Although the pages in-between the covers were a dingy cheap quality, the covers were beautifully decorated, many times with lurid portraits of pretty women in various stages of trouble, and the handsome men attempting to rescue them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt
Excerpt:
Alfred Elton van Vogt (April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded by some^[who?] as one of the most popular and complex^[1] science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century: the "Golden Age" of the genre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell
Excerpt:
John Wood Campbell, Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact), from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely."^[1]
As a writer, Campbell published super-science space opera under his own name and moody, less pulpish stories as Don A. Stuart. He stopped writing fiction after he became editor of Astounding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth_(film)
Excerpt:
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 1982 science fiction novel written by the Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He composed a soundtrack to the book called Space Jazz.