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Scientology has never been more high-profile than in the past several years, thanks to celebrity adherents like Tom Cruise. But the brainchild of science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard remains mysterious and controversial. More »
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Paul Thomas Anderson's untitled next film starts shooting soon, and the trickle of casting announcements is making it sound like a fantastic movie. But one question remains: Just how much did Anderson tone down the movie's Scientology references? More »
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In 1959, the same year Olympia Press published his most famous novel Naked Lunch, the writer William S. Burroughs visited the restaurant of his friend and collaborator, Brion Gysin, in Tangiers. There, Burroughs met John and Mary Cooke, a wealthy American hippie couple who were interested in mysticism. Burroughs recalled, "There was something portentous about it, as though I was seeing them in another medium, like they were sitting there as holograms." More »
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Director D.J. Caruso revealed his plans for his Dead Space film, and he's calling it a prequel. "You have have the whole sort of brainwash-y/Scientology thing, and ultimately the Necromorphs." A Necromorph/Scientology tie-in? You've got our attention. [MTV] More »
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Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Magnolia and Boogie Nights, is set to start shooting a movie about a science fiction author who founds a religion. Called his "untitled Scientology film," it will star Philip Seymour Hoffman as the "master." More »
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Not only was Scientology founded by a scifi writer, but its greatest enemy - the Anonymous group - models itself after a comic book character. Now members of the alien-loving religion are on trial in Australia for torture and baby-killing. More »
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Over on an anti-Scientology forum, someone asked a really good question: What if Philip K. Dick had become a religious figure instead of the much worse science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard? The resulting religion would be a lot cooler. More »
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Does the new scifi horror game Dead Space have a hidden agenda against Scientologists? We've told you all about EA's sci-fi horror game Dead Space - including the tragic romance that led up to its release, and even written about the game being banned in Germany, Japan and China. But now we've started hearing rumors about the game's hidden references to Xenu and the gang. More »
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No one scene could ever contain all there is to love about the psychotic trainwreck that is Battlefield Earth (based on the novel by L. Ron "Scientology" Hubbard). But this moment is one of the better ones. John Travolta and Forest Whitaker (oh Forest, how could you?) are Psychlons, aliens from planet Psychlon (duh) who have bombed humanity back to the stone age. Over hundreds of years, they've turned Earth into a primitive mining outpost populated by a sparse number of humans and a few cranky Psychlons wearing strange ventilators who just want to get back home. More »
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Yesterday we gave you a chance to read L. Ron Hubbard's 1970s novella, "Revolt in the Stars," which tells the most secret story at the heart of Scientology. We meet Xenu, the urbane dictator who murdalized a bunch of "undesirable" aliens billions of years ago by tossing them down to Earth next to volcanoes. Then he blew the volcanoes up with nukes and that was, like, really bad. But so few of you were able to slog through the whole story to get to the good bits that we've done you a giant favor and excerpted them below. More »
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Anyone who has heard about the Ultimate Secret of Scientology, the tale of Xenu the alien and his cruel volcano-esploding ways, has probably wanted to know more. What motivated Xenu? What kinds of clothes did he wear and what was his favorite music? Was he friends with psychiatrists? What were his true feelings about the Galactic Confederation and the Loyal Officers of the People? Now you can find out all this and more in a 1975 novella called "Revolt in the Stars," written by L. Ron Hubbard himself. More »
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Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's most notorious space opera is the religion of Scientology, which is packed with aliens and space battles and waves of invaders to our solar system. Hubbard even referred to the cosmological timeline behind Scientology as "the space opera," and for good reason. It reads like a pretty damn trippy science fiction novel. For your edification, we've created a handy timeline (below) that compares the scientific history of the universe with the Scientology history of the universe. Who knew all that alien stuff was going on during the middle ages? And before the Big Bang? More »
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We all know about the obvious science fiction connections to Scientology - thanks for that career choice, L. Ron Hubbard - but who knew that all of America's third-favorite religion could be explained away by an old Superman character's homeworld? That's the claim made by the PseudoScientology blog, which reaches back to one of Clark Kent's more confused foes to illustrate his point. More »
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