Battlefield Earth by L. Ron HubbardMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
While critics and audiences largely regard the movie Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta a cinematic turkey (though I’m pretty sure it’s better than, say, any political documentary), the book upon which it was based is fairly enjoyable, and inarguably science-fiction author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s magnum opus. An introduction precedes the main text in which the author gives his various reasons for writings and discusses the definition of what constitutes science-fiction literature, with mention of his meeting with John W. Campbell and the sci-fi genre being the herald of possibility.
The novel proper opens with Terl, part of an alien race known as the Psychlos, saying that man is an endangered species, with his species having dominated Earth for a millennium, during which the human hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler wants a formal funeral for his late father, afterward visiting the ruins of Denver, Colorado, where he has a run-in with an alien vehicle. Jonnie ultimately finds himself captive by Terl, who takes fascination at his human prisoner, who quickly learns how to speak the language of the aliens. Terl further instructs Jonnie on the nuances of Psychlo vehicles, intending to show off his skills.
Jonnie’s love Chrissie and her younger sister Pattie ultimately follow him, finding themselves captives of Terl as well, although they quickly plot escape. Jonnie himself secures the alliance of a tribe of humans in Scotland, and ponders ways to take advantage of Psychlo breathe-gas’s vulnerability to uranium. Terl also forces his human slaves to seek gold to use as leverage in his plans against his Psychlo superiors, with Jonnie further fascinated at the aliens’ teleportational technology, seeking a way by which to transport explosives to the Psychlo homeworld in hopes of destroying the planet.
Throughout the novel, there are hints of its backstory during the previous millennium, the Psychlos having gassed most of the human species to death, their last refuge being the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. Jonnie further seeks possible guards against the radiation caused by mining uranium, and a chase ultimately emerges where he needs to beat a Psychlo drone to Scotland before it unleashes gas upon them. He and his fellow humans also train in the art of flying battleplanes so they can resist the Psychlos when war emerges, and a young Scot named Bittie MacLeod serves as his squire.
In the latter portion of the story, Jonnie seeks to understand Psychlo mathematics, which have a base of eleven given the aliens’ having five fingers on one hand and six on the other, although inquiring about specifics causes the males to go berserk and the females to fall unconscious. One of the humans who ultimately serves as an adversary later on is Brown Limper Staffor, son of a parson in Jonnie’s hometown, with other alien races, some friendly and other hostile, coming to Earth to get in on the action against the Psychlos.
Day 92, during which Terl plans to blow up Earth and return to his homeworld, eventually comes, with further conflicts against the Psychlos erupting, and the fate of their planet settled, Jonnie at the end getting a lesson in Psychlo math. Several lyrics to songs Hubbard composed for his novel follow the main text, and overall I found Battlefield Earth to be a good long novel sure to please fans of science-fiction, with plenty of memorable characters such as Terl and Jonnie, and it’s definitely readable in small bursts, given the relative shortness of most chapters. Some distinguishment between the appearances of the various alien characters would have been welcome, but I’m not hesitant to recommend this sci-fi epic.
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