Battlefield Earth, the novel, reviewed

When you think of Battlefield Earth you immediately think of that infamous 2000 John Travolta movie that ruined his career for a second time and maybe some Scientology bashing.  What people kind of know but forget almost immediately is that there's a book written by the guy who created Scientology and only then it's when people say "The movie only told the first half the book's story!"  Now I already saw the movie many years ago and on my very old site I actually recommended it as a legitimately good movie...and no, I won't link it since that website is one of those crappy Angelfire sites that kids in High School make when they're bored, it's my Old Shame.  Anyways, I would probably think of the movie as great comedy now but that's not important.  What is important is that I decided to see the other half of the story so here we are with this review of the novel version of Battlefield Earth.

It is Year 3000 on Earth where man is an endangered species.  The evil alien race, the Psychlos, have conquered Earth and has turned it into a mining colony.  The only pockets of humanity is in irradiated areas where radiation has taken its toll.  However, there's one guy, Johnny Goodboy Tyler, who wants to make a difference and leaves his village to find something, anything that isn't an irradiated wasteland but wouldn't you know it he gets captured by evil Terl, the Psychlo head of security in Earth.  Terl wants to get off this planet and be rich so he creates this plan to do so using humans with Johnny as the main component of it all.  However, Johnny plans his own plan to retake Earth using other humans...and they succeed!  Then it's all smooth sailing except for the political backstabbing, the other aliens wanting Earth, an alien banking race wanting to repossess Earth and learning Psychlo math.


Now you're probably a bit peeved that I ruined the fact that Earth is retaken by the humans but you shouldn't be.  That happens around 450 or 500 pages into the book.  The book is 1050 pages...there is over 500 pages of epilogue which leads me to the biggest problem with the book.  It's way too long for it's own good.  It's like reading a long, rambling manifesto of beliefs about government, medicine and economics...but with aliens!  There is a perverse pleasure in reading this at times but most of it is stuff that my eyes just glaze over.  And it gets really bad during the epilogue where things get boring, confusing and way too technical.  As for the actual story...that's actually pretty fun albeit really stupid.  It does suffer from being poorly constructed from time-to-time but there is some nice action with great imagery there to keep the pulse up....if only Hubbard knew when to quit while he was ahead.

However, there is one shining moment in the book and that is Terl.  While I will freely admit that he's interesting like Edward Cullen was interesting in the first Twilight book, everyone was so boring, but I will grant any victory I can since I never want to hate on things just to hate on things.  His conversations with Tyler are actually quite entertaining on their own.  I actually would want to read a story from Terl's perspective, any story even though his story was told.  But the point is that I liked Terl and to give him the indignity of an off-screen death is well...indignant!  But then again, it could be I'm still remembering Travolta's over-the-top performance and it amuses me.

The actual story of the book may be incredibly stupid but it is incredibly fun but the hundreds of pages of epilogue suck!  It's boring, it's poorly constructed and it forgets that this book is called Battlefield Earth not Battlefield 16 Universes, Battlefield Politics, Battlefield Economics or Battlefield Math!  There's a horrible undercurrent of racism and sexism that disgusts even me and Hubbard's stance on things makes Steven Seagal's stance on the environment in On Deadly Ground look subtle!  Basically, just read the first 500 pages of the book and then throw it away...or better yet, watch the damn movie it's probably good for lots of laughs.

5/10