Mitt Romney once called Battlefield Earth his favorite novel

March 16, 2017 2:19 PM

A long, detailed look at L. Ron Hubbard as science fiction author.
posted by Chrysostom (47 comments total)

If worse were a book it would be Battlefield Earth.
posted by Cosine at 2:26 PM on March 16, 2017 [12 favorites]

If worse were a book it would be Battlefield Earth.

So bad, it's horrible.
posted by mikelieman at 2:29 PM on March 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

But it's so much shorter than Mission Earth!
posted by Chrysostom at 2:29 PM on March 16, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'll confess something terrible. I read Battlefield Earth at age 12 (It was cheap at the local used bookstore. I didn't know anything about Scientology or Hubbard. And I would buy almost anything from the sci-fi section). I have really fond memories of it. I haven't read it again and probably won't because life is short. But, for a 12 yr old, it was a really fun book. If Hubbard had a decent editor, I think it might have a chance at being remembered as an almost good two-fisted throwback to the old pulps.

I'll read the article now. Thanks for posting this.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:50 PM on March 16, 2017 [14 favorites]

Great article. Final Blackout really is a good story, with a nameless protagonist creepily reminiscent of Hitler's self-mythology. I'll have to find copies of Death's Deputy and Fear. If Scientology hadn't happened, L. Ron Hubbard would be remembered as a minor but entertaining writer of the 1940s, maybe with a "Best Of Hubbard" collection published by Doubleday/Ace in the mid-1970s, like C. L. Moore or P. Schuyler Miller.

One thing this article doesn't mention is how Campbell's dedication to Dianetics split the science-fiction writing community in the 1950s. The magazine he edited had been the flagship of the field for a long time, and as it became harder to publish in Astounding/Analog without some JWC-approved woo-woo, his stalwarts either spun off to new outlets like Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction, or embraced these ideas to their terrible detriment -- A. E. Van Vogt, the mad genius, became the mad bore. And some of Isaac Asimov's most interesting stories of the late 1950s-early 1960s ("Belief" and "Ideas Die Hard") were the result of his trying to split the difference between his own liberal, scientific materialism and Campell's psychic pseudo-psychology.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:54 PM on March 16, 2017 [17 favorites]

Romney saying he liked Battlefield Earth made me like him more as a person. Not because it's a good book (I've read enough of it to determine that I didn't need to read more of it), but because it's such a ridiculously non-political choice ("My favorite book? It would have to be a three way tie between The Bible, Chernow's biography of George Washington, and a collection of poems by Maya Angelou") that it has to be from the heart.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:56 PM on March 16, 2017 [50 favorites]

I read Fear after hearing it bigged up as his one decent book. It's... okay, I guess. Bit PKD on an off day, wouldn't really recommend.
posted by Artw at 2:58 PM on March 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Harvey Kilobit - huh, I thought Campbells woo was his own thing. But yes, he very much became psychic supermen or GTFO at that point.
posted by Artw at 2:59 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Good post, lousy post title: the linked piece has very little to do with Battlefield Earth, which is mentioned towards the end, and the title just encourages people to talk about Scientology. As an old sf fan, I appreciated the background on Hubbard's career, and as I recall (I haven't read them in many years) Final Blackout and Fear were pretty good (for their time—I agree with Artw, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone looking for good sf).
posted by languagehat at 3:01 PM on March 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

Mitt Romney once called Battlefield Earth his favorite novel

Ow! I rolled my eyes so hard they stuck. OWWWWW! Good thing I'm a touch typist otherwise yhhuswiykdb ereakkyt gard ti di,
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:04 PM on March 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

Artw - after getting kicked out of Dianetics Club, Campbell embraced all sorts of other silliness, like the perpetual-motion Dean Drive (which, according to its own theory, could be replaced by a paper diagram of itself and work just as well). It's interesting to wonder what direction SF would have taken without psychic woo, but y'know a lot of really good stuff (Samuel Delany, Robert Silverberg, Frank Herbert) got written because JWC put it in play.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:05 PM on March 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

Romney saying he liked Battlefield Earth made me like him more as a person. Not because it's a good book (I've read enough of it to determine that I didn't need to read more of it), but because it's such a ridiculously non-political choice ("My favorite book? It would have to be a three way tie between The Bible, Chernow's biography of George Washington, and a collection of poems by Maya Angelou") that it has to be from the hear
It's Never Lurgi

Does it? It seems like a committed Objectivist saying their favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged. Life, of course they would.
posted by Sangermaine at 3:06 PM on March 16, 2017

Looking forward to reading this over dinner. Hubbard is fascinating.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:07 PM on March 16, 2017

title just encourages people to talk about Scientology.

You do know that Mormons and Scientologists are completely different things, don't you?
posted by howfar at 3:08 PM on March 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

honestcoyote: I'll confess something terrible. I read Battlefield Earth

I'll admit that I read it at an age when I didn't know better. IIRC, bookstores were getting inflatable Psyclos.

Um with that said, and in the spirit of openness and transparency, I got though enough volumes of Mission Earth to realize it was dreck, and regretted every dollar spent on prior volumes.
posted by mikelieman at 3:12 PM on March 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Can't help feeling that along with a higher standard of literature Heinlein would have produced a higher standard of cult.
posted by Artw at 3:20 PM on March 16, 2017 [14 favorites]

I read Battlefield Earth when I was 19 or so. I was in the Army, and loved to read, but was stuck with whatever was laying around if I didn't bring it myself. Thus, Battlefield Earth. I'll bet my crewmates still remember me complaining about how shitty it was through the whole field exercise.
posted by me & my monkey at 3:22 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

> You do know that Mormons and Scientologists are completely different things, don't you?

You do know Hubbard started Scientology, don't you? What the hell was the point of your comment?
posted by languagehat at 3:26 PM on March 16, 2017

"...Heinlein would have produced a higher standard of cult."
I see what you did there.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:27 PM on March 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

In his prime, Hubbard was genuinely popular

That's not a high bar. Dan Brown is popular, too, but that doesn't mean his books are any good.

Harvey Kilobit: the perpetual-motion Dean Drive (which, according to its own theory, could be replaced by a paper diagram of itself and work just as well)

Ensign: "The gravitational-inertial radiation drive has failed!"

Engineer: [hold up notepad] "I have an idea."

I'd read that story.
posted by curiousgene at 3:27 PM on March 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

I know things are bad when I see the name Mitt Romney and feel nostalgia.
posted by Splunge at 3:29 PM on March 16, 2017 [13 favorites]

languagehat: I think it was a mistaken reply that should have gone to Sangermaine's comment. Although now I think of it, the "deep" histories behind both Mormonism and Scientology have sci-fi premises.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:30 PM on March 16, 2017

You do know Hubbard started Scientology, don't you?

I'm confused as to what Scientology has to do with Mitt Romney. Unless you're just annoyed that the post title of a post about Hubbard as science fiction writer references the best known piece of Hubbard's work as a science fiction writer.
posted by howfar at 3:57 PM on March 16, 2017

This was a really good read. I guess I knew some of the history, but I hadn't realized how involved Campbell was in the formation of dianetics, etc. I will probably read the book when it comes out.

The author's blog also seems worth the time.
posted by brennen at 4:00 PM on March 16, 2017

You do know that Mormons and Scientologists are completely different things, don't you?

That's just what the lizardmen want you to think!

Corporations are people, healtcare is Communism, and Pepsi Blue is Coke Zero. But Scientology isn't Mormonism??? Whatever, Dr Lizardman.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:07 PM on March 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

I read Battlefield Earth when I was 19 or so. I was in the Army, and loved to read, but was stuck with whatever was laying around if I didn't bring it myself. Thus, Battlefield Earth.

I know someone who went to college in China, and said that this was one of the few books available in English and that's why HE read it.

The only work of Hubbard's I've ever written was a pamphlet containing an essay he wrote about Art, which I'm assuming was published by the local Scientilogy outpost and which inexplicably came in the mail one day at a theater company I once worked with. They kept it in the bathroom along with all the other "what the hell is this and where did it come from" reading material.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:12 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Does it? It seems like a committed Objectivist saying their favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged. Life, of course they would.

And if Mitt Romney had said his favorite book was Ender's Game then that argument might apply. But Mitt Romney isn't a scientologist and L Ron wasn't raised Mormon (so far as I know), so I guess I'm missing your point.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 4:18 PM on March 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the link to the author's blog, brennan! He has another article about L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, and Golden-age science fiction writers here. (It starts out with some interesting observations on the popularity of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, of all things.)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:23 PM on March 16, 2017

I once came close to seeing the movie in theaters.

I was young, ignorant, and desperate for any excuse to revisit the new stadium-seating multiplex that had opened in time for The Phantom Menace. If I recall, a lack of a car was the only thing that spared me from that trainwreck.

I wouldn't be so lucky with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:25 PM on March 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Sometimes I wonder what mid 20th century science fiction would have been like without Campbell. I suspect it would have been a lot less popular, and it's likely fewer writers would have been able to make a living by writing. But, we might have escaped a decades-long parade of batshit crazy psionics and juvenile pirate stories, and more of it might actually be worth reading today.

To learn that Campbell also played a crucial role in Scientology's origins is, somehow, not surprising. But, interesting.
posted by eotvos at 4:53 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fully half this thread is arguing about the title of the post. I can't speak for Chrysostom, but I'd wager that he simply offered it as an amusing factoid (yes, Romney actually said this), because FPPs require a title and sometimes it's hard to think of something super witty or illuminating. Unless there's reason to expect that this argument will go somewhere productive, can we drop it? I don't even understand who's objecting to what.

It's a well written article, but little of it was new to me – I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Scientology and LRH, and devoured everything I could find on the subject.

I was surprised to learn that relatively little of his fiction output was SF. I knew he'd worked in other (always pulpy and speculative) genres, but I'd definitely gotten the sense that SF eventually became his primary genre.

I've read very little of his fiction, but I've read a lot about it, and commentators always mention his cardboard characters, threadbare plots, and ham-fisted cliches. A lot of his pulp work was churned out via a form of automatic writing – and, famously, in a single pass with no editing or reflection.

I have read a fair bit of his writings about dianetics and Scientology, and his literary technique in that genre reads like the pulpiest of pulp SF. It's an empty froth of hackish technobabble, breathlessly inflated scales (why use a number in the thousands, when you can use billions or trillions?), and cheap hyperbole at the expense of narrative coherence. It's a literature of cardboard ideas instead of cardboard characters: you can find the superficial forms of scientific theories, lines of reasoning, philosophical postures, etc., but there's no there there. It's all show, and no substance.

So, yeah – some of LRH's work earned a measure of critical respect, but he also churned out a lot of dreck. And it seems clear that his experience as a hack writer informed his approach to dianetics and Scientology.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:07 PM on March 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

well, i've not only read battlefield earth, i've read all 10 books of mission earth

i must have been bored

damned if i can remember any of it, except a vague sense it was entertaining and that's just about all it was
posted by pyramid termite at 5:18 PM on March 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yes, I just intended the Romney thing as an amusing factoid, as I didn't have any good pullquotes. Apologies for unintentional derail.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:35 PM on March 16, 2017

pyramid termite, the one mildly clever thing I recall from Mission Earth is the capital was protected by some kind of field that moved it 10 minutes into the future, so it wasn't there was if you tried to bomb it.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:37 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

[..] Campbell embraced all sorts of other silliness, like the perpetual-motion Dean Drive (which, according to its own theory, could be replaced by a paper diagram of itself and work just as well).

Actually, the bit of silliness that 'could be replaced by a paper diagram of itself and work just as well' was the Hieronymus machine.

(I know this because a local library carried Analog when I was growing up.)
posted by rochrobbb at 5:46 PM on March 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've read very little of his fiction, but I've read a lot about it

Yeah, me too. Yes I've read _Battlefield Earth_, and as Mark Twain said about Wagner, it's really not as bad as it sounds. In fact, I was entertained. Now that Mission Earth stuff, yish... each book too thick, all with garish, unappealing cover art, life's too short, why would anyone? And yet, I've always understood his best work to be the pulp he wrote before Scientology, but it's never reprinted (or so I've always heard) because that organization prevents it.
posted by Rash at 9:33 PM on March 16, 2017

1982. Eleven year old me is in the library, looking for something to bring on a sure-to-be-boring trip to the aunt's place. She'd read pretty much everything in the adult SF/F section by now but still mostly kept to that genre. And there it was on the new books shelf, this bit thick tome buy an author I'd vaguely heard of as a big name in the sixties. Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard.

I checked it out. I took it on that trip. And for the first time in my life, I stopped reading a book because I could tell it was absolute crap and even with an empty weekend spreading out before me, life was just too damns horr to waste another second reading this thing.

I'd given up on books before. Not feeling it, not wanting to spend time with the main character, just not giving a fuck about the story. But this was the first time I ever said "this is crap" and threw it aside. Well, put it aside. It was a library book, you know? Had to bring it back.

So thank you, Elron, for that valuable experience. It was the first book I put down as crap, but not the last.
posted by egypturnash at 9:50 PM on March 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

damned if i can remember any of it, except a vague sense it was entertaining and that's just about all it was

There was this scene in one of the books where whats-his-name gets in a car and leaves the windows down as he drives until it cools off and the air-conditioning starts working... I think.

AND that's about all I got, too.
posted by mikelieman at 10:05 PM on March 16, 2017

From the article: "[The] scheming alien Terl, the only character with any personality, inexplicably disappears a third of the way from the end: he literally dies on the way back to his home planet."

I wonder if that inspired Poochie's fate on The Simpsons?
posted by Paul Slade at 12:49 AM on March 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

The thing about Battlefield Earth is that the first 300 pages are a really solid read. The situation is no sillier than any, say, Marvel movie, and the hero may not have superpowers, but if he were an RPG character his Luck stat would be off the roof. It's very entertaining. And the whole plot reaches a climax and mankind is going to be saved... and then the plot twists.

And then the plot twist is followed for about 75 pages and again, mankind is going to be saved... and then the plot twists.

Etc. For nearly 900 pages hardcover, I believe. I have it sitting on a shelf but I'm not going to get up to look.

it was truly fun to read, but ended up getting more and more exasperating as the book went along until finally i was sort of hate reading it even while kind of enjoying the prose.

Now, Mission Earth... hoy jeebs! Mostly what I remember about reading THAT was that it was some sort of strange allegory about modern politics with different planets in the solar system being used to represent different countries? That and a lot of really homophobic material and a lot of ranting about how evil psychiatrists are. Again, entertaining read, but sort of hate reading it by the end.

I did also read Fear, which is a book I've revisited more than a few times, TBH. It has something in common with Charles Williams as far as the tone and themes explored. It's not GREAT, but it's interesting and its story is a bit haunting.

I guess I'd recommend Fear, really.
posted by hippybear at 1:31 AM on March 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

I read Battlefield earth in my mid teens before I knew anything about Scientology. I really enjoyed it, and I still think it's a good popcorn type read; you can plough through pages and pages of it, and it has loads of twists, as hippybear mentioned. I'm glad I read it unburdened from all the extraneous noise; it is a bit creepy when you know more about Hubbard's shtick.

The film is possibly one of only two films i've not watched to a conclusion though. It was REALLY bad. Not even funny bad.
posted by trif at 7:34 AM on March 17, 2017

I enjoyed the heck out of Battlefield Earth as a youngin', and have actually considered finding a way to read it again, provided I could ensure no money made its way to the Hubbard estate.

It's not great or anything, but there are precious few other stories that up the scope of the conflict in quite the same way. In fact, I can't think of any that go from "save the village" to "conquer the galaxy" like that, and I know I certainly hadn't read anything like it at that age.
posted by Imperfect at 10:04 AM on March 17, 2017

As a side note (and warning: I didn't RTFA first) some remnant of Hubbard's estate, or the church he founded, or something, still sponsors a contest for speculative fiction writers:

Writers Of The Future.

I'm told that it's "a solid credential" for newish SF writers. Winners attend a week-long workshop with established writers, and winning stories are published in anthology format. So, there's that.
posted by newdaddy at 11:23 AM on March 17, 2017

And for the first time in my life, I stopped reading a book because I could tell it was absolute crap...

Pretty much had the same experience with Atlas Shrugged.
posted by e1c at 11:57 AM on March 17, 2017

When I saw the author's last name I immediately thought to myself, "now that's a name I've not heard in a long time." I went to high school with his brother, if I'm not mistaken. Glad to see a local boy making good.
posted by Standard Orange at 10:44 PM on March 17, 2017

In the universe where Heinlein got to be the cult leader I guess the role of Fear would be payed by The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hogue.

Just all around classier, you see?
posted by Artw at 11:23 PM on March 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Pretty much had the same experience with Atlas Shrugged.

I read the entire book in a single sitting, because I knew that if I stopped, I would never pick it up again.
posted by brennen at 1:31 AM on March 18, 2017 [1 favorite]