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Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year
3000
Series: ----------
Authors: L. Ron
Hubbard
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 1243
Words: 402K
From Wikipedia.org
In
the year 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos,
for a millennium. The Psychlos discovered a deep space probe
(suggested to be Voyager 1) with directions and pictures mounted on
it and the precious material, gold, that led them straight to Earth.
After
one thousand years, humanity is an endangered species numbering fewer
than 35,000 and reduced to a few tribes in isolated parts of the
world while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth.
Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young man in one such tribe, lives in the
shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Depressed by the recent death of his
father and both the lethargy and sickness of most of the surviving
adults in his tribe, later determined to be caused by
radiation-leakage from decaying nuclear land-mines, he leaves his
village to explore the lowlands and to disprove the superstitions
long held by his people of monsters in those areas. He is soon
captured in the ruins of Denver by Terl, the Psychlo chief of
planetary security.
Psychlos
stand up to 9 feet (2.7 m) tall and weigh up to 1,000 pounds (450
kg). They originate from Psychlo, a planet with an atmosphere
radically different from Earth, located in another universe with a
different set of elements. Their "breathe-gas" explodes on
contact with even trace amounts of radioactive material, such as
uranium. The Psychlos have been the dominant species across multiple
universes for at least 100,000 years. It becomes apparent in the
later chapters that the Psychlos were originally non-violent miners
but were subjugated by a ruling class called "Catrists" to
become malicious, sadistic sociopaths.
Terl
has been assigned to Earth, and his term has been arbitrarily
extended by Numph, the planetary head of mining operations. Fearful
at the thought of spending several more years on Earth, Terl decides
to make himself a multi-millionaire to escape, by secretly mining a
lode of gold in the Rocky Mountains that his planetary scanner drones
have recently found. It is surrounded by uranium deposits that make
Psychlo mining impossible, so Terl decided to capture a Man-Animal to
mine the gold for him.
Terl
forces Jonnie to submit to a learning machine programmed by a servile
race that was exterminated centuries earlier for going on strike. It
quickly teaches him numerous subjects, including the Psychlo
language, by implanting the information directly into Jonnie's brain.
He befriends a Psychlo midget named Ker, who is only 7 feet tall but
still possesses the impressive strength of a Psychlo, and is markedly
less psychotic than the others.
Looking
for leverage against Jonnie, Terl captures his childhood-love
Chrissie and her sister, Pattie, who went searching for Jonnie a year
after he left their clan, and holds them hostage to ensure his
continued cooperation. Thereafter, Jonnie is free to move around the
mining area. Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland where Jonnie recruits
eighty-three Scottish people to help with the mining, including
several deliberately selected body-doubles for Jonnie, older women to
perform the cooking and clothes mending, a doctor, a teacher, and a
historian. Jonnie tells the Scots about the evil deeds of Terl, to
include how he has imprisoned Jonnie's love and her little sister.
Led by Robert the Fox, the Scots agree to help him fight against the
Psychlo rule on Earth and rescue Chrissie and Pattie. Terl does not
understand English, and is instead convinced that the Scots are
motivated by a promise of pay on project completion.
While
Jonnie and his Scottish allies mine the gold deposit, they also
secretly explore the ruins of humanity to look for uranium that can
be weaponized for use against their Psychlo oppressors. This
subterfuge is aided by the aforementioned body-doubles, making it
appear to Terl's surveillance that the mining operation is the sole
priority of the human contingent. Meanwhile, Terl finally gains
leverage on Numph, discovering that he has been stealing company
funds. Terl blackmails him, effectively negating Numph's power over
him, allowing Terl to continue with his mining plans.
Terl
has been busy obfuscating the purpose of the gold-mining operation
and implementing his plan to ship the human-mined gold back to the
Psychlo home-planet. Terl's plan involves replacing lead coffin-lids
with lead-plated facsimiles made from the gold mined by the Scots,
and shipping these coffins with dead Psychlos in them, home. When he
finally returned to Psychlo, he could then dig up the coffins and
sell the lids to make his fortune. All dead Psychlos are to be
returned to home planet for burial, but recent safety measures have
reduced accidents. Terl thus has to manufacture accidents to kill
Psychlos, and decides to assassinate Numph as well, to get the bodies
needed.
During
the semi-annual teleportation of personnel, goods, and coffins to
Psychlo, Jonnie and his allies co-opt Terl's plan by packing the
coffins with "dirty nukes" and "planet busters"
they have found, and replacing the golden coffin-lids with the
original lead lids. After the last teleportation, the humans use the
Psychlos' own weapons against them and gain control of the planet.
With humans in control of Earth, Jonnie works to discover the secret
of Psychlo mathematics and teleportation. This is a difficult task,
compounded by the fact that Psychlo math is based on the number
eleven, and Psychlo equations appear to make no sense.
Before
the teleportation, Jonnie is forced to oppose a longtime rival from
his own clan, Brown Limper Staffor, who is seeking to wrest control
of Earth for himself. Unwittingly used by Terl to advance his own
plans, Brown Limper nearly succeeds after gaining assistance from a
group of cannibalistic mercenaries from southern Africa called the
Brigantes, and their leader, General Snith. But Brown Limper is
killed by Terl just before the Psychlo's teleportation, and the
Brigantes are defeated.
It is
discovered that all Psychlos have a deep brain-stimulation device
implanted in their brains to make them controllable. Meant to make
work pleasant for them, the device promotes extreme sadism in the
males, causing them to attack any non-Psychlo who shows interest in
Psychlo mathematics and teleportation. If the Psychlos are
unsuccessful in killing their intended victims, the device compels
them to commit suicide. The removal of this device frees the handful
of remaining Psychlos on Earth from its affects. Curiously, Ker did
not have any such device implanted in his brain.
With
the Earth being threatened by other alien races looking for
restitution because they had suffered under the harsh rule of the
Psychlos, Jonnie opposes a race of intergalactic bankers seeking to
repossess the Earth for unpaid debts. The security and independence
of humanity once again threatened, Jonnie redoubles his efforts to
figure out Psychlo teleportation.
It is
eventually discovered that the dirty nukes sent with the intent of
destroying the capital city on Psychlo instead started a chain
reaction which reached into the planet's core due to over-mining,
causing the planet to explode and transform into a star. Jonnie also
discovers that other Psychlo facilities scattered about the multiple
universes were destroyed by their own reliance on teleportation as
they performed their scheduled teleportation shipments, and instead,
brought back radioactive solar matter. This holocaust killed every
single Psychlo in the multiple universes except for the handful
remaining on Earth. Once it is revealed that all female Psychlos who
leave the homeworld are sterilized to prevent off-world births,
Johnny realizes that the Psychlos on Earth will not be able to
reproduce, and eventually, the Psychlo race will become extinct.
Jonnie
then works out a way to prevent the repossession of Earth via
contracts Terl had signed with Brown Limper Staffor. The Psychlo had
thought that it would be amusing to make Staffor believe that he was
the legal owner of Earth as well as all Psychlo possessions across
the multiple universes, by signing a contract that stated as much
before his final teleportation to Planet Psychlo. Terl had no way of
knowing that he was about to die, along with almost his entire race,
with the destruction of his homeworld. Once planet Psychlo was
destroyed, Terl was the highest ranking member of the Intergalactic
Mining Company left alive, and his signature on Staffor's contract
became legal. That meant that Jonnie, as the recognized leader of
Earth with the death of Brown Limper, now owned what was left of the
entire Psychlo empire. Using these contracts, the Earth Planetary
Bank pays off all debts to the intergalactic bankers.
However,
Jonnie is still perplexed by Psychlo mathematics. With the help of an
aged Psychlo engineer, he learns about Psychlos using a cipher system
and dummy equations to make their mathematics unsolvable. At the same
time, he also discovers how the Psychlos protected their
teleportation technology in their local equipment, and records the
circuits for future use. Using the existing teleportation console,
Jonnie is able to bring back breathe-gas from a planet in the Psychlo
star system that was never officially recorded. With the Psychlo math
and the circuits, Earth begins to manufacture teleportation
equipment, sold to numerous planetary systems via the intergalactic
bankers. At the same time, Jonnie uses the Earth's newly acquired
wealth to buy impenetrable force fields and automated orbiting
defense platforms to protect the Earth from future threats.
With
the Earth secure and the human population growing and learning about
its true history, Jonnie gives ownership of the Earth back to its
people. A few years later, Jonnie and Chrissie are married and they
have a son and a daughter. With human civilization being rebuilt and
thriving, Jonnie and Chrissie take their children and leave for an
isolated part of the world to train them in the old ways of survival,
and to live out the rest of their lives in peace. But, after a year,
their friends find them and implore them to return to civilization,
which Jonnie reluctantly agrees to.
Years
later, frustrated with un-ending fame and life away from nature, a
middle-aged Jonnie takes some supplies and quietly slips away to the
Rocky Mountains, never to be seen again. He becomes a figure of
legend.
Having read this several times in highschool and Bibleschool and then
again in 2009, I am pretty familiar with the story. After my
disastrous attempt at re-reading the Mission:
Earth series in '14, I'd held off any more re-reads
authored by Hubbard. But the time seemed right and I'd given
Battlefield Earth 5stars in '09, so it seemed like a safe bet.
Thankfully, it was. This is still a 5star read for me.
Now, I found on this re-read that this felt more cartoony, almost
space opera than in years past. In the intro Hubbard goes on for
many, many pages talking about what led up to this book and I must
admit, he pontificates. Given that he was a cult leader, that
shouldn't surprise anyone though. But his goal with this book was to
write a “real science fiction” novel and off he goes for pages
explaining what he means by that. I found it interesting but I think
he missed the mark to be honest. This book is a romance. One lone
warrior saving not only the Earth, but the entire 16 universes,
pretty much all by himself? It's definitely SF alright, but like any
genre, proliferation has led to fragmentation and just what is “real
science fiction” now? So while still enjoyed this, I don't think I
would have if I had been introduced to it for the first time right
now.
This massive tome (it makes even Sanderson seem normal. The mass
market paperback is almost 1500 pages!) never felt weighed down
though. While Hubbard definitely introduces pet economic and social
theories, and explains them, they are explained in just a paragraph
or 2 without turning the book into a vessel of preaching. The story
moves right along while action isn't the main focus, it is generously
sprinkled throughout so I was never bored. The story is split into 2
main sections. The first deals with Johnny and the Psychlos and the
second deals with Johnny and the other space faring races. Humanity
kicks butt and I felt like saying “hoo rah” at several points.
For you movie people, there is a movie based on this book. It was
pushed forward by John Travolta, a scientologist himself. Don't watch
it. It is the worst thing ever and why Travolta thought it would be a
good thing to link to scientology is beyond me. Many, many changes
are made from the book, all for the worse and Travolta's ego is front
and center. I've pretty much blanked it out of my memory and simply
remember it as A Bad Movie.
I am not sure that I will be re-reading this again though. I've
gotten what I want from this book over the years and I think this is
the last time I could read it and still enjoy it this much. It feels
like time to shelve this for good.
★★★★★
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