A Piece of Blue Sky
By:
Jon Atack
Reviewed by OFW editor: Renée Miller
Published: November 05, 2012
From time to time, members have written to ask whether my choice of book reviews is part of a mysterious plan or if I randomly pluck anything from my library shelves. The answer is simple or convoluted, depending on your point of view and sense of humor.
To review a new fiction offering or the latest bestseller would be of little use since the Web is awash with reader’s comments, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
OFW is a website for writers and though reading fiction is essential to study the craft, in my opinion a writer needs other sources; those rare works that attempt to explain our society and the world where we live.
“Write what you know” is the best advice a writer can hope for. And subject knowledge is irreplaceable when we create characters or we describe the actions of others. In my opinion we can hardly write with authority about the ethical, social, moral and psychological makeup of our characters unless we strive to find out the reasons behind our behavior, our fears, our quirks or our irrational contentions.
Though I respect everybody’s beliefs, I’m often baffled by a logical premise that many of my colleagues forget; namely that every belief must have been invented, and thus conceived by an individual at a point in time.
In Quest in Paradise, David Attenborough, narrates about the extraordinary “cargo” cults of Pacific Melanesia and New Guinea. It appears that during WWII, winged shapes were seen to drop a bounty of gifts from the heavens. Someone (it must have started with someone) proposed that the winged shapes were gods. In this way, a new cult was born; a cult which now comprises tens of thousands of adherents, prophets, clergy, liturgy and the complex paraphernalia surrounding institutionalized beliefs.
I propose that if we could study “the point in time,” the precise moment when someone invented or conceived a belief, the details would afford a writer a priceless insight into our collective psyche; a bird’s-eye view of what makes us tick.
A Piece of Blue Sky is an account of such “point in time,” of the moment and the ensuing years after Lafayette Ron Hubbard, a sci-fi writer, invented a belief, the instant in which he told an associate: “Let’s sell these people a piece of blue sky.” My copy—showing the signs of much-thumbed age—is a first edition 428-page hardback, published by the Carol Publishing Group in 1990. It cost me then a hefty $21.95 but it’s a sign of the times that it can be downloaded free in PDF format from here:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/A%20Piece%20of%20Blue%20Sky.pdf
and as an e-book from here:
http://ebooksbox.org/10160-jon-atack-a-piece-of-blue-sky-scientology-dianetic.html
I don’t know if these sites are legit or if they have permission to offer a writer’s work free of charge, so you better check.
A Piece of Blue Sky is the work of Jon Attack. The writer joined Scientology when he was 19 years old and remained in the organization from 1974 to 1983. The book starts with him and his experiences.
He continues by narrating the history of Mr. Hubbard’s beginnings from birth and childhood to the development of Scientology birth of Dianetics.
The book—in the style of investigative journalism—is passably written, well edited and containing a wealth of research and information. To be fair, most of the details and references to documents had been detailed in earlier books, but A Piece of Blue Sky has the cohesiveness to guide anyone through the maze of a belief and its genesis.
Also, I must warn readers that the prose is difficult to follow as it appears jumbled at times—on account of the myriad details, names, events and references.
In the foreword of A Piece of Blue Sky, Jon Attack writes:
It was 1950, in the early, heady days of Dianetics, soon after L. Ron Hubbard opened the doors of his first organization to the clamoring crowd. Up until then, Hubbard was known only to readers of pulp fiction, but now he had an instant best-seller with a book that promised to solve every problem of the human mind, and the cash was pouring in. Hubbard found it easy to create schemes to part his new following from their money. One of the first tasks was to arrange “grades” of membership, offering supposedly greater rewards, at increasingly higher prices. Over thirty years later, an associate wryly remembered Hubbard turning to him and confiding, no doubt with a smile, “Let’s sell these people a piece of blue sky.”
My opinion about the story within the book and its morals is irrelevant, but any writer going through its pages should ponder that Scientology’s publishing arm, New Era Publications, attempted to prevent A Piece of Blue Sky’s publication.
Furthermore, the recorded judgment of law courts in America, England and France, and governments in Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and Germany have determined that Scientology is a criminally felonious swindle. A London judge ruled in 1984: “Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious.... It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power.”
I’m stating these facts because the beauty of A Piece of Blue Sky is the painstaking detail of how such a belief that many consider preposterous or even criminal, was invented by a single man; a belief followed by tens of thousands (according to independent sources) or tens of millions (according to Scientologists).
I believe that such an insight is a valuable asset to any writer when drawing characters and attempting to realistically portray their weaknesses, strengths, foibles, psychological needs and emotional alienation. There, now you know why I choose outlandish books to review.
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