Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer who engaged in the ultimate experiment: to create a religion founded on utter bullshit, yet endowed with the sociological and psychological components that "make religions work". To that end he wrote "Dianetics", proving to all the world just how mediocre a writer he was, and yet how gullible some people are.

His enduring fame is that his "joke religion" called Scientology to this day actually has new adherents.

MurdeeroOn the high seas
Hubbard went to sea with some unfortuate Scientologists. Those who displeased him were locked in cupboards for days or even weeks at a time. Others were blindfolded, bound and thrown overboard, presumably to drown. 

L. Ron was also the author of a notorious work of junk pseudoscience, All About Radiation. It was so bad he left his name off the first edition and credited it to "a nuclear physicist and a medical doctor". L. Ron Hubbard is neither, of course.

Science fiction by Hubbard

 * A Silly Scientology story about Xenu -- that scientologists really believe!

No relation
(From RationalWiki)
 * Elrond the half-elf of Rivendell