Well, it'd make sense that a Scientology founder's book was Mitt's fave.
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Similarities between Mormonism and Scientology
L. Ron Hubbard could have easily substituted Kolob for Venus in his religion.
According to Scientology, when a person dies — or, in Scientology terms, when a thetan abandons its physical body — they go to a "landing station" on the planet Venus, where the thetan is re-implanted and told lies about its past life and its next life. The Venusians take the thetan, "capsule" it, and send it back to Earth to be dumped into the ocean off the coast of California. Source: Thetan (Wikipedia)
Seems to me that, per the Mormon myth narrative, when when an earthling is becoming "encapsuled" they leave from a "launching station" on the planet Kolob, where the Mormon spirit is implanted inside a human body, and once born with a Mormon family, the Mormon is told lies about its past life and its next life. The Mormon gods take the Mormon, "capsule" it in that body, and send it to Earth to be dumped at age 8 into the Mormon baptismal founts off of many international coasts. LDS (Mormonism) and Scientology: A Brief Theological Comparison Under one of the differences, I actually see more of a connection...#6 mentions Mormonism's "exaltation to godhood"...Scientologists a "return to Thetanhood" as its "final goal."
If there is a resemblance between the two founders, presumably it is because Hubbard looked at Joseph Smith and the LDS and decided it would provide him with a very useful model for a successful religion. He gave it an SF twist, because that was what he was good at, and it probably amused him.
Well, Hubbard did have to "twist" any sci-fi that Mormon leaders hadn't already done before him -- just a lot less detail.
For example:
* Lds "prophet" Brigham Young: Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? ...when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain.
Source: Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, p. 271...1870 -- so keep in mind, Young had already been leading the Lds church for about 25 years or so when he made this comment.
Brigham Young's first counselor was "apostle" Heber C. Kimball: "Where did the earth come from? From its parents earths...The earth is alive. If it was not, it could not produce." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6, p. 36, 1857)
BTW, where did Brigham Young get his "source" re: the habitation of the moon?
Oliver B. Huntington: Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a prophet. As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do--that they live generally near the age of 1000 years. He described the men as averaging nearly six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age; that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea, and--to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can not behold with your eyes. The first two promises have been fulfilled, and the latter may be verified. From the verification of the two promises we may reasonably expect the third to be fulfilled also. (Source: Young Woman's Journal, Vol. 3, pp. 263-264, 1892)