Reddit mentions of The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown: A Novel

Oh! Yes, I think I get your meaning a bit better.

I don't perceive things quite the same way you do; but I can agree with at least an echo of it. (And it doesn't mean that either of us are right or wrong... or that that's even relevant.)

I've sometimes explained my love of libraries by saying that I feel the whispers of all the voices in all those books. I can feel the "eternity" of the authors (or their fictional characters) speaking to me. Not in any literal sense, mind you; just the connection to the past and the people who created those realities.

However, I don't generally think of it as absorbing other minds, per se, because I am also aware that each of those creations is a mock-up, a (usually conscious) creation. While it's common to assume that a novelist agrees with the opinions expressed by his book's characters, I know that's not so. It helps that I've met a lot of very famous writers, and I have seen firsthand how they are like/unlike those whose stories they tell. (Not always a pleasant experience, either. There's one amazing writer whose SF books I loved, until I met her at a convention and decided she's kind of a jerk. Now I have to almost physically throw her "image" out of my head to re-read the novels... which are still very good.)

And on top of that: We are not always who we present ourselves to be. Or we show only one facet of ourselves in a given context. The SF author I dislike may simply be an introvert, and thus prickly in person, but a warm and wonderful person when you get to know her.

So if all I had was the "works" of the people who created them... perhaps I could absorb their creations, but I don't imagine that's who they are.

That would especially be true of LRH, who had a strong, sometimes overwhelming persona in person (the novel The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown does a remarkably good job of capturing it). But he also was an astonishingly good listener who could be very empathic. That doesn't show up in his writing (in the tech as well as his earlier fiction), because he rarely let that side of himself show.