When Hubbard finished the manuscript, which he titled Excalibur or The One Command, he cabled publishers, telling them to meet him in Penn Station to bid for the rights. Hubbard later claimed to have withdrawn the book after the first six people who read it went insane, while another jumped from the window of an office tower, and he wrote of his ambitions to Polly: Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed. . . . I do know that I could form a political
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