L. Ron Hubbard’s “Mission Earth” series. I was young, and I’d read damn near all the sci fi that my local library had, I was acught up on the Wheel of Time that had been published to that point (I think it was still about five books before Jordan died), and gave it a try.
It was fucking awful.
Given that I was maybe 12 at the time, that’s saying something; it was just trash.
I read Battlefield Earth and actually enjoyed it, but in the same I enjoyed eg. watching Plan 9 from Outer Space (or the Battlefield Earth movie for that matter.)
It’s an abject piece of shit as a book, written late enough in Hubbard’s life that nobody dared edit him so there’s whole chapters that just sort of repeat, and many of its premises are so stupid it hurts, but its old-timey pulp scifi schlock feel was often very fun.
So yeah, not a good book by any definition, but it was sorta fun and also interesting to read knowing that Hubbard tried to inject his world view into it too. For example the reason why the Psychlo were so eeeeeevil was that they were ruled by the Catrists who’d eg. use psychosurgery or electric shocks to make Psychlos more compliant – knowing that Hubbard absolutely loathed psychiatrists, it’s not hard to see that Psychlo Catrist = psychiatrist.
I, too, enjoyed the gawdawful trash that was the Battlefield Earth movie. Yeah, it’s dumb, but if I only watched good sci-fi, that would be, like 50 movies total.
Maybe.
I’m pretty sure that one of my favorites, Event Horizon, would not make the list of good sci-fi.
Oo I love Event Horizon. It’s a bit of a scifi horror cult classic though isn’t it? Not exactly Blade Runner, but not Battlefield Earth either.
One of my favorite trashy scifi movies is maybe Saturn 3 (Zardoz doesn’t count!). It’s a godawful piece of shit featuring Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and a baby faced Harvey Keitel. It’s astonishingly bad and great fun to watch, and there was some sort of fairly hilarious story behind how it got made too (I’ll have to see if I can dig up the blog post I read about it)
My sci-fi lit class used to vote on what book we would do next. We once voted on Battlefield Earth partially as a joke, but we were also curious about how bad it could be. We regretted it.
Heh, yeah I guess it’s different if you have to read it for some assignment. I sort of enjoyed it in a masochistic way, although I definitely skipped parts (especially the repeating crap) and like I said I wouldn’t call it a good book by any stretch of the definition
I tried to read the mission earth series but I just couldn’t connect with it. There was too much in the universe that it just expected you to relate to but gave no explanation of what it actually was. That being said, I was also young when I tried to read it.
L. Ron Hubbard’s “Mission Earth” series. I was young, and I’d read damn near all the sci fi that my local library had, I was acught up on the Wheel of Time that had been published to that point (I think it was still about five books before Jordan died), and gave it a try.
It was fucking awful.
Given that I was maybe 12 at the time, that’s saying something; it was just trash.
Friends don’t let friends read Hubbard.
I read Battlefield Earth and actually enjoyed it, but in the same I enjoyed eg. watching Plan 9 from Outer Space (or the Battlefield Earth movie for that matter.)
It’s an abject piece of shit as a book, written late enough in Hubbard’s life that nobody dared edit him so there’s whole chapters that just sort of repeat, and many of its premises are so stupid it hurts, but its old-timey pulp scifi schlock feel was often very fun.
So yeah, not a good book by any definition, but it was sorta fun and also interesting to read knowing that Hubbard tried to inject his world view into it too. For example the reason why the Psychlo were so eeeeeevil was that they were ruled by the Catrists who’d eg. use psychosurgery or electric shocks to make Psychlos more compliant – knowing that Hubbard absolutely loathed psychiatrists, it’s not hard to see that Psychlo Catrist = psychiatrist.
I, too, enjoyed the gawdawful trash that was the Battlefield Earth movie. Yeah, it’s dumb, but if I only watched good sci-fi, that would be, like 50 movies total.
Maybe.
I’m pretty sure that one of my favorites, Event Horizon, would not make the list of good sci-fi.
Oo I love Event Horizon. It’s a bit of a scifi horror cult classic though isn’t it? Not exactly Blade Runner, but not Battlefield Earth either.
One of my favorite trashy scifi movies is maybe Saturn 3 (Zardoz doesn’t count!). It’s a godawful piece of shit featuring Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and a baby faced Harvey Keitel. It’s astonishingly bad and great fun to watch, and there was some sort of fairly hilarious story behind how it got made too (I’ll have to see if I can dig up the blog post I read about it)
My sci-fi lit class used to vote on what book we would do next. We once voted on Battlefield Earth partially as a joke, but we were also curious about how bad it could be. We regretted it.
Heh, yeah I guess it’s different if you have to read it for some assignment. I sort of enjoyed it in a masochistic way, although I definitely skipped parts (especially the repeating crap) and like I said I wouldn’t call it a good book by any stretch of the definition
I tried to read the mission earth series but I just couldn’t connect with it. There was too much in the universe that it just expected you to relate to but gave no explanation of what it actually was. That being said, I was also young when I tried to read it.
I read Dianetics and I’m still not “clear.” Must’ve done something wrong before birth.
Instructions unclear: thetans stuck in volcano