Yes, we all know Battlefield Earth: a Fosbury Flop of a sci-fi movie made by devotees of a mad cult leader, featuring John Travolta in dreds and platform boots (and an uncomfortably large cod-piece...). You can glean the details of how this monstrosity was foisted on the public here and here; in a nutshell, L. Ron Hubbard threw the book at Mr. Travolta and said, "Here...make a movie out of this." And lo, it was done.
I have yet to see the movie, although I've seen clips online. It's lurking out there somewhere, waiting for me. In the meantime, I have come into possession of the original written version, and decided to take a stab at it.
A little background before we get started. Battlefield Earth was published in 1982; old Elron's Church of Scientology had been around for thirty years. The story itself is in no way a propaganda piece - LRH was apparently yearning for the good ole pulp days of the '40's, when he started writing - but bookstores were subjected to C of S's shady tactics, including "book recycling": members bought armloads of the books and returned them to the publishers, who then boxed and shipped them right back to the bookstore. Not only did CoS's in-house publishing company save a buttload of money, but Battlefield Earth zoomed to the top of the New York Time's Bestseller List (but then so does a lot of crap - Bestseller List spots get bought and sold like Illinois Senate seats). The Church of Scientology's involvement also explains why no one was willing to touch the screenplay except a fly-by-night operation called Franchise Films, which was sued for fraud soon after the film's release. The CoS, despite its penchant for mustache-twirling cartoon villainy ("And I, L. Ron Whiplash, will top the NYT's Bestseller List! MYA-NYA-NYA!") is still a serious font of crazy, and none of LRH's books have been made into general-release films since.
So with all that in mind - it's quite fascinating, actually; I hope to see a documentary about it - I dove into Battlefield Earth with some trepidation. The verdict? It's not that bad. Then again, it's not that good, either.
The events of BFE take place in the year 3000. Earth has been overtaken by the villainous Psychlos (from the planet Psychlo), and the human race has been reduced to ragged remnants of illegitimate illiterates only fit to be described in alliteration. Our hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, hails from a small enclave in the Colorado Rockies; the villagers are dying of a mysterious ailment, and Jonnie thinks it's the valley itself that's killing them. So off he rides.
He runs smack into a Psychlo security chief named Terl. Terl is just as brutish and arrogant as the other Psychlos, but Terl for one realizes that humans are actually intelligent, and can be trained. This sets his gears churning. He's been looking for a way off this far outpost of a planet, where the air is poison (to Psychlos) and the plant life is a disgusting shade of green; he's discovered a rich vein of gold in the mountains, but has no way to mine it for himself without alerting the company. Using the humans as miners, he can hide the operation in paperwork. Once he gets the gold, he can wipe away the evidence - humans included - and return to Psychlo high on the hog. Easy-peasy.
What he doesn't count on, of course, is the tenacity of Our Hero, and the ingenuity of the species he thinks of only as "animals". Huzzah for the Humans!
The book covers the first part of the successful human rebellion, then the events afterward. It's almost two books smushed together in that way, but it works.
The good points: the novel's plot ticks along like a sturdy, well-oiled clock, each little mechanism tripping another one down the line; nothing arbitrary, nothing inefficient. Even the more lugubrious agonies of the prose (we'll get to that later) can be glossed over due to the ease of reading. I was pleasantly surprised to find I couldn't put it down. The author shows a fascination with how the characters manage to pull off a stunt, and you'll be there right along with him, watching the football match: Jonnie's forces destroyed the Psychlo base! But oh no, Terl got away! But Jonnie's shot him down...oh no! Terl launched the Bomber Drone! How will Jonnie foil him this time? Et cetera. A ripping good yarn if there ever was one. If pulp isn't your thing, I can understand; but as an aspiring science fiction writer myself, I can appreciate a solid story when I read it, even if it's the literary equivalent of a homemade wooden chair - no work of art, but satisfying nonetheless.
Then there's the Psychlos, and Terl in particular. I got off to a rocky start with these guys, as I couldn't get the image of Mr. Travolta & Co. out of my head. But I was quickly and pleasantly disabused of this image, as after a couple of pages, the Psychlos seemed to leap fully-formed into my head. I got the impression of a shambling, bear-like creature with a tiny head raised in haughty distaste, its gas mask's air tube hanging down like an elephant trunk. Industrial-looking clawed hands grasp a belt with an enormous buckle, emblazoned with the Galactic Mining Corporation symbol of a factory belching smoke. Brutality and pomposity in one satisfying package. Terl himself is hilarious in his frustrated rage and gleeful villainy, laughing at his own stupid jokes, and always scheming for "leverage" against his fellow Psychlos. The Galactic Mining Corporation, of which the Psychlos are employees, is a bureaucratic absurdity: while its ships prowl the galaxy with super-advanced weaponry, the middlings at corporate headquarters sit around in cubicles, yap into the telephone, and stamp "Rejected" on request forms. It's almost Terry Gilliam-esque, a future where all the technology is an inefficient mess of vacuum hoses and rotary-dial telephones, and pleasant-looking secretaries transcribe interrogation sessions on a typewriter - screams included.
But at the same time Terl, and the other Psychlos, are downright scary: huge and brutal, with glowing yellow eyes. I don't remember the last time I was so impressed by the physicality of a villain, as though he were right in front of me...maybe Mr. Hyde from Allen Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that was a comic book. When Terl is with Jonnie, you get a sense of an abusive father: grudgingly caring for his charge, but always scheming, prone to acts of violence. The Brute who thinks he's sophisticated. The relationship is so real, so cat-and-mouse, you wonder if the author weren't channeling something. You root for Jonnie to get free, but when he does, it's almost a letdown - the characters are no longer playing off one another in close quarters. Yet even when Terl is away from Jonnie, he's still the most compelling character in the book.
And of course, there's the sci-fi technology. The Psychlo tanks and planes, while not all that original, have a sturdy, lived-in feel - you or I could jump into a Psychlo tank Mk II and take it for a spin, skimming four feet off the ground, blasting a building with a single shot. Great fun. The Bomber Drone is huge and ominous, like a rusty toxic waste barrel lumbering through the stratosphere. You get a great sense of the clanging, industrial Teleportation stage at the Psychlo base, with its squawking PA system and warning sirens, the crackling buildup of energy and then the lightning bolt as it fires off a shipment to Psychlo. It feels real, as though you could drive past your local Light Industrial district and witness a shipment arriving in a flash of light. These are the moments when the novel works best - when the time-bending future intersects with the industrial Now.
Now, of course, for the bad.
Humans in this book don't fare very well - not only because they are near extinction, but because Hubbard has barely sketched them out at all. Jonnie is nice and all, seems concerned for the welfare of his people, rides horses, hunts, and probably makes a good martini, too...but that's about it. He has pretty much no distinguishing features. The fact that he's described as "blond and blue-eyed" and about twenty years old doesn't help his case much; you'll get more character from the picture of him on the cover, where he's shown shirtless (natch) and nonchalantly firing off two purple lasers with a vaguely suggestive smile on his face. It's a good thing for the story that the plot doesn't require Our Hero to emote, or really do much, or even matter beyond acting as a stand-in for Any Generic Action Savior. His gooey-eyed woman-devotee, Chrissie, is also blond and blue-eyed and does even less beside dote on Our Hero and get captured and so forth. A little girl, Pattie, is thrown in for human interest. That's it. Tabula rasa. Plug them in, and watch them go. Jonnie's horse has more personality than all three of them combined.
It gets worse. Apparently, in the future, earth is inhabited by ethnic stereotypes as well as action cliches. Terl takes Jonnie to Scotland, where they pick up a band of humans who turn out to be - ready for this? Highlanders. Yes, sword-swinging, castle-living, bagpipe-blowing kilt-and-tam wearing honest to God Highlanders. It's pretty dumb. Hubbard just manages to pull it off, but barely; it was almost a book-ender for me. Thankfully the Scots are earnest and have good work ethic have a thing for machinery and stern religious morals, or they'd just end up as complete cliches...you know what? Never mind. And don't even ask about the Russians and Swedes and Chinese.
Reality check, here: I suppose that, if the world were to end tomorrow, the survivors would draw on their ethnic backgrounds to survive as a culture. But it still felt ridiculous. It was as if Hubbard, unable to actually give the humans some characteristics, just decided to give them some funny hats and accents and call it good. Thankfully the humans get all the good action sequences; leave the internal stuff to the Psychlos, who are the real stars of this show.
On to the prose. In action sequences, which is the majority of this book, it clicks along at a good pace - artless, but efficient. It's in the calm moments that Hubbard stumbles badly, making rookie mistakes that would make an eighth-grade Creative Writing student cringe. How about when Jonnie mounts his horse, in "one fluid motion"? Gah! "In one fluid motion, Jonnie was up on Windsplitter." No! No no no. Pro tip, Mr. Hubbard: no one ever does anything in "one fluid motion", much less mount a goddamn horse. Jonnie might "heave himself up into the saddle", or "spring into the saddle" maybe; but no matter what your riding prowess, it's not a fluid motion. That's just terrible writing. Even saying it makes me shudder, like a huge wet tongue just licked me. Ech. Time to move on...fluidly.
That's not the most egregious example, but it is the most obviously amateurish. At other points, in the midst of his very clear action sequences, Hubbard trips and his words land in an unintelligible jumble. His prose is like a bicycle, or maybe a shark: it only works when it's in motion. There are points when you can feel a sort of desperation sneak in, like he's sitting there thinking, "Oh God, Jonnie's stopped moving! What can I have him do next? Quick, think of something..." You get the feeling the book was written not by a fifty-year-old man but by a teenage boy; a precocious teenager, maybe, but not a mature novelist. Could have used some editorial guidance. Considering the people he surrounded himself with (i.e., fanatical devotees), Hubbard did pretty well; but the book could have used a very critical eye now and then.
So the verdict? Well, on the whole, I liked it. I liked the Psychlos. I'd almost want to make my own movie version, maybe animated, and give the Psychlos top billing. The humans, not so much. For the writing, I'd give it a C-: not as bad as William Shatner, but certainly no Heinlein or Asimov. As far as pulp goes, it's a rollicking good read, hard to put down. Not literature by any stretch of the term.
Two out of five stars (but a quirky two out of five - worth checking out).
I have yet to see the movie, although I've seen clips online. It's lurking out there somewhere, waiting for me. In the meantime, I have come into possession of the original written version, and decided to take a stab at it.
A little background before we get started. Battlefield Earth was published in 1982; old Elron's Church of Scientology had been around for thirty years. The story itself is in no way a propaganda piece - LRH was apparently yearning for the good ole pulp days of the '40's, when he started writing - but bookstores were subjected to C of S's shady tactics, including "book recycling": members bought armloads of the books and returned them to the publishers, who then boxed and shipped them right back to the bookstore. Not only did CoS's in-house publishing company save a buttload of money, but Battlefield Earth zoomed to the top of the New York Time's Bestseller List (but then so does a lot of crap - Bestseller List spots get bought and sold like Illinois Senate seats). The Church of Scientology's involvement also explains why no one was willing to touch the screenplay except a fly-by-night operation called Franchise Films, which was sued for fraud soon after the film's release. The CoS, despite its penchant for mustache-twirling cartoon villainy ("And I, L. Ron Whiplash, will top the NYT's Bestseller List! MYA-NYA-NYA!") is still a serious font of crazy, and none of LRH's books have been made into general-release films since.
So with all that in mind - it's quite fascinating, actually; I hope to see a documentary about it - I dove into Battlefield Earth with some trepidation. The verdict? It's not that bad. Then again, it's not that good, either.
The events of BFE take place in the year 3000. Earth has been overtaken by the villainous Psychlos (from the planet Psychlo), and the human race has been reduced to ragged remnants of illegitimate illiterates only fit to be described in alliteration. Our hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, hails from a small enclave in the Colorado Rockies; the villagers are dying of a mysterious ailment, and Jonnie thinks it's the valley itself that's killing them. So off he rides.
He runs smack into a Psychlo security chief named Terl. Terl is just as brutish and arrogant as the other Psychlos, but Terl for one realizes that humans are actually intelligent, and can be trained. This sets his gears churning. He's been looking for a way off this far outpost of a planet, where the air is poison (to Psychlos) and the plant life is a disgusting shade of green; he's discovered a rich vein of gold in the mountains, but has no way to mine it for himself without alerting the company. Using the humans as miners, he can hide the operation in paperwork. Once he gets the gold, he can wipe away the evidence - humans included - and return to Psychlo high on the hog. Easy-peasy.
What he doesn't count on, of course, is the tenacity of Our Hero, and the ingenuity of the species he thinks of only as "animals". Huzzah for the Humans!
The book covers the first part of the successful human rebellion, then the events afterward. It's almost two books smushed together in that way, but it works.
The good points: the novel's plot ticks along like a sturdy, well-oiled clock, each little mechanism tripping another one down the line; nothing arbitrary, nothing inefficient. Even the more lugubrious agonies of the prose (we'll get to that later) can be glossed over due to the ease of reading. I was pleasantly surprised to find I couldn't put it down. The author shows a fascination with how the characters manage to pull off a stunt, and you'll be there right along with him, watching the football match: Jonnie's forces destroyed the Psychlo base! But oh no, Terl got away! But Jonnie's shot him down...oh no! Terl launched the Bomber Drone! How will Jonnie foil him this time? Et cetera. A ripping good yarn if there ever was one. If pulp isn't your thing, I can understand; but as an aspiring science fiction writer myself, I can appreciate a solid story when I read it, even if it's the literary equivalent of a homemade wooden chair - no work of art, but satisfying nonetheless.
Then there's the Psychlos, and Terl in particular. I got off to a rocky start with these guys, as I couldn't get the image of Mr. Travolta & Co. out of my head. But I was quickly and pleasantly disabused of this image, as after a couple of pages, the Psychlos seemed to leap fully-formed into my head. I got the impression of a shambling, bear-like creature with a tiny head raised in haughty distaste, its gas mask's air tube hanging down like an elephant trunk. Industrial-looking clawed hands grasp a belt with an enormous buckle, emblazoned with the Galactic Mining Corporation symbol of a factory belching smoke. Brutality and pomposity in one satisfying package. Terl himself is hilarious in his frustrated rage and gleeful villainy, laughing at his own stupid jokes, and always scheming for "leverage" against his fellow Psychlos. The Galactic Mining Corporation, of which the Psychlos are employees, is a bureaucratic absurdity: while its ships prowl the galaxy with super-advanced weaponry, the middlings at corporate headquarters sit around in cubicles, yap into the telephone, and stamp "Rejected" on request forms. It's almost Terry Gilliam-esque, a future where all the technology is an inefficient mess of vacuum hoses and rotary-dial telephones, and pleasant-looking secretaries transcribe interrogation sessions on a typewriter - screams included.
But at the same time Terl, and the other Psychlos, are downright scary: huge and brutal, with glowing yellow eyes. I don't remember the last time I was so impressed by the physicality of a villain, as though he were right in front of me...maybe Mr. Hyde from Allen Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that was a comic book. When Terl is with Jonnie, you get a sense of an abusive father: grudgingly caring for his charge, but always scheming, prone to acts of violence. The Brute who thinks he's sophisticated. The relationship is so real, so cat-and-mouse, you wonder if the author weren't channeling something. You root for Jonnie to get free, but when he does, it's almost a letdown - the characters are no longer playing off one another in close quarters. Yet even when Terl is away from Jonnie, he's still the most compelling character in the book.
And of course, there's the sci-fi technology. The Psychlo tanks and planes, while not all that original, have a sturdy, lived-in feel - you or I could jump into a Psychlo tank Mk II and take it for a spin, skimming four feet off the ground, blasting a building with a single shot. Great fun. The Bomber Drone is huge and ominous, like a rusty toxic waste barrel lumbering through the stratosphere. You get a great sense of the clanging, industrial Teleportation stage at the Psychlo base, with its squawking PA system and warning sirens, the crackling buildup of energy and then the lightning bolt as it fires off a shipment to Psychlo. It feels real, as though you could drive past your local Light Industrial district and witness a shipment arriving in a flash of light. These are the moments when the novel works best - when the time-bending future intersects with the industrial Now.
Now, of course, for the bad.
Humans in this book don't fare very well - not only because they are near extinction, but because Hubbard has barely sketched them out at all. Jonnie is nice and all, seems concerned for the welfare of his people, rides horses, hunts, and probably makes a good martini, too...but that's about it. He has pretty much no distinguishing features. The fact that he's described as "blond and blue-eyed" and about twenty years old doesn't help his case much; you'll get more character from the picture of him on the cover, where he's shown shirtless (natch) and nonchalantly firing off two purple lasers with a vaguely suggestive smile on his face. It's a good thing for the story that the plot doesn't require Our Hero to emote, or really do much, or even matter beyond acting as a stand-in for Any Generic Action Savior. His gooey-eyed woman-devotee, Chrissie, is also blond and blue-eyed and does even less beside dote on Our Hero and get captured and so forth. A little girl, Pattie, is thrown in for human interest. That's it. Tabula rasa. Plug them in, and watch them go. Jonnie's horse has more personality than all three of them combined.
It gets worse. Apparently, in the future, earth is inhabited by ethnic stereotypes as well as action cliches. Terl takes Jonnie to Scotland, where they pick up a band of humans who turn out to be - ready for this? Highlanders. Yes, sword-swinging, castle-living, bagpipe-blowing kilt-and-tam wearing honest to God Highlanders. It's pretty dumb. Hubbard just manages to pull it off, but barely; it was almost a book-ender for me. Thankfully the Scots are earnest and have good work ethic have a thing for machinery and stern religious morals, or they'd just end up as complete cliches...you know what? Never mind. And don't even ask about the Russians and Swedes and Chinese.
Reality check, here: I suppose that, if the world were to end tomorrow, the survivors would draw on their ethnic backgrounds to survive as a culture. But it still felt ridiculous. It was as if Hubbard, unable to actually give the humans some characteristics, just decided to give them some funny hats and accents and call it good. Thankfully the humans get all the good action sequences; leave the internal stuff to the Psychlos, who are the real stars of this show.
On to the prose. In action sequences, which is the majority of this book, it clicks along at a good pace - artless, but efficient. It's in the calm moments that Hubbard stumbles badly, making rookie mistakes that would make an eighth-grade Creative Writing student cringe. How about when Jonnie mounts his horse, in "one fluid motion"? Gah! "In one fluid motion, Jonnie was up on Windsplitter." No! No no no. Pro tip, Mr. Hubbard: no one ever does anything in "one fluid motion", much less mount a goddamn horse. Jonnie might "heave himself up into the saddle", or "spring into the saddle" maybe; but no matter what your riding prowess, it's not a fluid motion. That's just terrible writing. Even saying it makes me shudder, like a huge wet tongue just licked me. Ech. Time to move on...fluidly.
That's not the most egregious example, but it is the most obviously amateurish. At other points, in the midst of his very clear action sequences, Hubbard trips and his words land in an unintelligible jumble. His prose is like a bicycle, or maybe a shark: it only works when it's in motion. There are points when you can feel a sort of desperation sneak in, like he's sitting there thinking, "Oh God, Jonnie's stopped moving! What can I have him do next? Quick, think of something..." You get the feeling the book was written not by a fifty-year-old man but by a teenage boy; a precocious teenager, maybe, but not a mature novelist. Could have used some editorial guidance. Considering the people he surrounded himself with (i.e., fanatical devotees), Hubbard did pretty well; but the book could have used a very critical eye now and then.
So the verdict? Well, on the whole, I liked it. I liked the Psychlos. I'd almost want to make my own movie version, maybe animated, and give the Psychlos top billing. The humans, not so much. For the writing, I'd give it a C-: not as bad as William Shatner, but certainly no Heinlein or Asimov. As far as pulp goes, it's a rollicking good read, hard to put down. Not literature by any stretch of the term.
Two out of five stars (but a quirky two out of five - worth checking out).
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