The year was 1938, and if L. Ron Hubbard was not yet exactly a household name, its appearance on the cover of a Thrilling Adventures or Five Novels Monthly was guaranteed to instantly boost circulation. (The same was also true for a number of the pseudonyms he employed to span the various genres.) Hoping to capitalize on precisely that popularity, the publishing giant Street & Smith enlisted Mr. Hubbard to help reshape their newly acquired Astounding Science Fiction. Although not particularly familiar with the genre, Mr. Hubbard was intrigued with the proposal: whereas Astounding had previously focused on improbable machinery—spaceships, ray guns and robots—Street & Smith had decreed the magazine must take a more human turn with fully realized characters, i.e., “real people.”