Publication History
The book was published in August 1951 and was originally dedicated to his daughter Alexis Valerie Hubbard (whom he later disowned). It was dictated on SoundScriber discs in Havana, Cuba, where Hubbard took refuge when his marriage to his second wife Sara Northrup Hubbard broke down. Author Russell Miller claims Hubbard was in an advanced state of mental deterioration at the time of the book's creation, consuming large quantities of alcohol and addictive prescription drugs, consumed by paranoia and elaborate persecution complexes relating to a wholly fictional attempt by Communists to ruin Dianetics, and was embroiled in a bitter and often surreal custody dispute over his then infant child Alexis.
By the time Science of Survival was published, the public popularity of Dianetics had faded and only one Dianetics Foundation - Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Wichita, Kansas, funded by millionaire Dianeticist Don Purcell - was still in existence. The Wichita Foundation underwrote the costs of printing the book. It recorded poor sales when first published, with only 1,250 copies of the first edition being printed. However, the book has remained in print as a standard reference work of the Church of Scientology and is listed in their Materials Guide Chart.
A deluxe 50th anniversary revised edition was released in 2001 and a new revised edition in 2007.
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