1937-1940:
His popularity is now such that Hollywood seeks purchasing film rights to his novel, Murder at Pirate Castle. Columbia Pictures requests that he adapt this work for the screen under the title Secret of Treasure Island. Arriving in Hollywood in May 1937, he begins scripting Secret of Treasure Island and commences work on three other big screen serials: The Mysterious Pilot, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok and The Spider Returns.

Upon returning to New York, executives from Street & Smith, one of the world’s largest publishing concerns, enlist Mr. Hubbard’s expertise for their newly acquired magazine, Astounding Science Fiction. He is asked to help boost sagging sales with stories about real people—not machinery. He accepts their proposal and the face of science fiction is changed forever.

In 1939, Street & Smith launch a second new magazine, Unknown, and it is soon filled with Mr. Hubbard’s fantasy writings.

On 19 February 1940, Mr. Hubbard is elected a member of the prestigious Explorers Club. Concurrently he plans an Alaskan expedition, and on 27 July 1940, his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition embarks from Seattle. His vessel is the 32-foot ketch, Magician, and she sails under Explorers Club flag number 105. He completes a voyage of some 700 miles, charting previously unrecorded hazards and coastlines for the US Navy Hydrographic Office. He also conducts experiments on radio directional finding, and examines local native cultures, including the Tlingit, the Haidas and the Aleutian Island natives. On 17 December 1940, the US Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation awards Mr. Hubbard his Master of Steam and Motor Vessels license.

In December he returns to Seattle, resuming his writing while presenting the US Navy with the hundreds of photographs and notations they had requested.