This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Technos Series: Dumarest #7 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 154 Words: 47K
At least this book wasn’t named after a woman. I was getting rather tired of that. Of course, Earl Dumarest sleeps around like a flipping clock. I mean, a space prostitute is so smitten by him that she gives him a freebie, apparently all night long. Sigh.
The story is the same as all the previous ones. Earl is trying to track down more info about Earth, goes to a hellhole of a planet, finds out it was all for naught, gets one teensy tiny clue and then goes off hunting again.While fighting off Cyclan plots.
It’s always the setting and whatever adventure is written that makes these stand out. Here Earl has to hide out on a technological planet and survive a mechanical death maze. It was pretty cool.
Once again the cover is awesome. Earl is wearing his usual 70’s disco-spacesuit with the bubble helmet. It just makes me want to do the whole Dance Fever, John Travolta thing. Oh Beeeeehaaaaave!
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
Synopsis – click to open
“A dying man’s last words brought Dumarest to Loame, ‘the garden planet’. Its name was a mockery–Loame’s gentle citizens could only watch in horror as their fields were ravaged by a mutated vine that destroyed all it touched. They were sure the acid-dripping vine was the work of their enemy world, Technos.
Technos was not a world open to outsiders–but Dumarest is not a man who takes no for an answer. As a fugitive, as a prisoner of war, as the captive bedmate of a queen, he continues his quest, seeking an answer to the question that his his life’s obsesson: ‘Have you ever heard of a planet called _Earth_?'”
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Lallia Series: Dumarest #6 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 154 Words: 44K
Dumarest meets another chickie-boo, has some adventures in space, finds an ancient artifact that performs miracles of healing and gets a better idea of where Earth is located. Of course, Chickie-boo dies. I suspect every girl Dumarest meets is going to fall in love with him and then die. Talk about a Black Widower
These adventures of Earl’s are like mini-adventures. Just enough to keep life interesting but not long enough to call it an adventure steak. It’s like getting one big steak tip, knowing there’s a whole bowlful of them.
So while I’d like gorge myself, Tubb is forcing self-control on me by doling these out one at a time. It’s good for me, so I can only complain so much about it before being forced to admit the justice of it all.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia.org Dumarest is searching for old charts, and takes passage as a cargo handler on a run-down old trading ship. The dynamics of the flawed men forming the crew are well-described. An agent of the Cyclan confronts Dumarest, and indirectly this reveals a secret property of Dumarest’s ring. Dumarest is healed by an alien ship or device, which gives him a vision showing where Earth is located.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Jester at Scar Series: Dumarest #5 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 176 Words: 54K
This felt extremely short, even though it was longer than the previous book, Kalin. Earl has his little adventure on Scar, the mold harvesting planet (yeah, it’s just disgusting) and then has the chance to go be a rich son of a gun on some no-name world and flips a coin. The coin goes against that choice, and the book ends. BAM. I was totally expecting him to go to the other world and have continuing adventures there in this book.
On the plus side, no naked ladies on the book cover. Or in the book either. The lady portrayed is the wife of the said Jester and she’s a snotty nosed blueblood who begins to learn that taking care of your people is what is important, not just ruling over them. That theme was done a bit heavy handed, but I had a bottle of bbq sauce on hand, so I swallowed the morality lesson without too much problem.
By this point, if I was Earl Dumarest, I’d give up on finding Earth and I’d go to war against the Cyclans. Every book they have either tried to kill him, have him killed or spiked his plans for finding Earth in one way or another. I’d try to find their secret homeworld and nuke their sicko little world of brain boxes into nothing. Given his success rate of staying alive on planets that just want to kill you, I think his chances would be pretty good. John Wick In Space!
Going to end with some more cover love. This series has some great art and I am just loving it. While I know they won’t last for the whole series, I am trying to enjoy each one as it comes along. Live in the moment as it were.
Should be Embiggenable
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia.org
Synopsis – Click to Open
Dumarest finds himself on a planet with an economy based on transient labor harvesting spores of fungi valuable for different properties, which grow abundantly on a planet with rapid seasons. He must survive the natural hazards of the monsoon season, and prepare for the hazards of the harvest as many of the fungi are dangerous to lethal. Ultimately he is given a task, by the “Jester”, that wins him freedom but costs him the fruits of his labor. He also confronts a Cyclan because they have become nemeses by this point in the saga. Dumarest’s red ring is mentioned repeatedly in this novel.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Kalin Series: Dumarest #4 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 155 Words: 45K
Earl Dumarest ends up on yet another bad world that seems intent on killing him, runs into another hot and sexy psychic chicky-boo, runs into the Cyclans and loses said chicky-boo.
I have begun wondering, if traveling seems to be pretty much blind (every story involves travelers getting stranded in bad places because they didn’t know it was bad), then how does mankind stay together and not totally fracture? I mean, if everybody learns that World X is a really bad place and you’re going to be enslaved, then who would go there? I suspect both Tubb’s view and my own are formed from our own perspectives on data. Tubb was in the isolation era, where you might be lucky to know something about the State next to yours whereas I live in the Information Age where I can converse with bloggers from Zimbabwe without even thinking about it (Hi Beaton!). I “expect” civilization to be able to share data from one end to the other whereas Tubb didn’t even consider it as a possibility. It just goes to show that your surroundings and settings do affect your thought processes.
Tubb’s writing can be a bit opaque at times. It wasn’t until I saw an alternate cover that was emblazoned with “Dumarest and Dinosaurs!” (or some close approximation) that I realized the creatures Tubb describes Earl as hunting were dinosaurs. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the adventure to not realize that, but once I saw those words, my mental image of the various scenes were clarified greatly.
The Cyclans are once again presented as a great menace but we don’t learn anything new about them. I suspect they will be the “standard” background villain in most of these books. The Universal Brotherhood gets some extra facetime but basically we learn that they are a “Feel Good and be an Ascetic” kind of organization. There is nothing spiritual about them whatsoever beyond the mystical new age “we are all gods” kind of mumbo jumbo you’d expect from a “universal” organization.
To end, it would almost be easier if Dumarest wasn’t searching for Earth. Besides the issues I’ve talked about in previous reviews, the whole data thing applies to this as well. It shouldn’t be so hard to track down Earth, but it is because of Tubb’s world view when he wrote this. If he were alive today, he’d have to come up with a different reason for why Earth is so unknown.
I’m also including a large version of the cover again. These things are great!
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
Click to Open
Many times, Dumarest’s dream of Earth has almost cost him his life. As he journeys from world to world, restlessly moving outwards towards the edge of the galaxy where his goal lies, Dumarest must be alert, watchful. For there are new dangers – forces more powerful than man – which threaten his dream. On a planet where violence and superstition hold sway, Dumarest forges a bond with the prophetess Kalin. And now, more than ever, he needs her. Kalin. The mutant girl whose mysterious talent for seeing into the future has already saved him from Bloodtime on Logis, from space-disaster, from slavery on desolate Chron. Kalin. Who can foretell the terrors yet to come.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Toyman Series: Dumarest #3 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 158 Words: 46K
I am thoroughly enjoying these adventures of Earl Dumarest. He’s a man’s man with just the right amount of bravado and nonchalance balanced with a caring side that comes out at the oddest times. In this adventure, he comes to the planet Toy, can’t immediately pay his way off the planet and thus is drafted into a game where the corporate owners of Toy bet stock options on the outcomes of battles. The Toyman, the leader with the most stock, is a megamaniacal murderer who wants to be the supreme leader. He’s being helped by the Cyclans and Earl gets caught up between the factions.
In one scene, he has to fight a cage full of spiders, each the size of a basketball or larger. With his bare hands. There was some major pulp action going on! It was great.
Also on the plus side, there was no woman for Dumarest to get involved in. There is the sister of the Toyman, and she controls the next largest chunk of stock, but she’s in love with one of the other leaders and her brother uses that against her.
The whole point of Dumarest coming to this world was to ask the Super Computer about Earth. But of course, the Cyclan’s plot destroys the ONE part of the machine that had that info. Dumarest does learn that Earth is also called Terra, so he got one crumb. One measly crumb. But as I pointed out in the previous review, Dumarest getting back to Earth doesn’t make sense, so it has really lost its meaning to me.
The covers. Man, there were some weeeeeeeird ones. I chose this one because it showed the least amount of nakedness. One has Dumarest in a plastic codpiece with giant plastic shoulder pads wielding a sword while another has a naked mutant lady with flippers and wings in a giant tank with Dumarest looking on. Neither were covers I wanted to showcase, so you ended up with this monstrosity. I have zero idea what it is supposed to represent, but I figure it some artists drugged out idea of Dumarest and the world of Toy.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
Space-wanderer Earl Dumarest is on the planet Toy to consult the giant computer which may contain information on the whereabouts of Earth, his lost home-world. But soon he realises Toy is a place that gives away nothing for free. Before Dumarest can gain the information he needs, he must take part in the Toy Games – must fight like a tin soldier in a vast nursery. And there is nothing playful about the Games on Toy. The pain is real enough; the wounds, the blood – and death.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Derai Series: Dumarest #2 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 188 Words: 60K
Dumarest is hired to escort a young woman back to her home planet. Normally he wouldn’t care to, but she claims to be a telepath and has some knowledge of mythical Earth. In the process, he falls in love with her and ends up in some sort of Death Game to help her family, which would somehow help her. She ends up getting a fatal wound and is put in some sort of cocoon thingy. Another Love That Wasn’t Meant To Be. I have a feeling a lot of these stories about Dumarest will follow that pattern.
I am beginning to wonder if the Cyclans, a group of humanity that is trying to become pure brain power is what sparked the idea of the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. That’s just one of those random thoughts I had. Nothing to base it on really besides the coincidence of the names.
Dumarest is a great leading character. He’s mature, he’s not stupid, he thinks his actions through (for the most part) and he’s not afraid to do what is necessary to get a job done. And he sticks to his goal of finding Earth. Of course, I do wonder WHY he wants to find Earth so bad. It was a horrible, burnt out wasteland when he left it, filled with horrible people barely surviving. It is not some paradise he was stolen from. He left it for a reason. So why does his whole existence now center around getting back? I don’t feel that Tubbs (the author, but man, I want to make some serious fat jokes now) has really provided a reasonable explanation other than tapping into a collective desire to “go back” that most of humanity has. I realize nostalgia can be a powerful, driving force, but nostalgia for a place where people beat you, used you and tried to kill you? Yeah, something doesn’t scan with that.
However, the story itself is still quite enjoyable. Adventure, telepaths, dastardly family politics, evil Cyclans. This has it all and Tubbs does a great job of weaving a very entertaining story out of all those parts.
Now that cover. Is that fantastic or what? Of course, it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the story but man, I’d buy a book with that cover in a heartbeat. I’m giving this the cover love tag because of that and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the featured cover at the end of the month. Unless something else really knocks my socks off. But anything else will have to be really gooooood to do that.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia.org
Synopsis – Click to Open
Dumarest is recruited to escort a waif of a woman lost on an unfamiliar world back to her home and family. Upon delivery he is recruited to assist the family further by participating in a trial to benefit their patriarch. The waif is the Lady Derai, heiress to a noble house, and they are able to succeed due to special circumstances relating to Derai. In the end, he is confronted with a member of the Cyclan once again and his victory is tainted by sacrifice.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Winds of Gath Series: Dumarest #1 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 168 Words: 45K
Another short novel. I zipped right through it, enjoyed it immensely and then had to sit back and try to figure out why I enjoyed it so much. The story was ok. A young boy, Earl, stows away on a spaceship and becomes a Traveler and ends up on a world with some mystical singing stones. There’s a plot to replace an heiress and murder ensues and some good old fashioned mayhem. All in all there was nothing here that should have attracted me the way it did.
But upon some intense navel gazing and narcissistic mental contortions, I realized that I actually appreciated the writing itself here. Not because anything stood out, but because it was a totally smooth read without a single interruption of an awkward word or a wrongly turned phrase or a scene segue that was too abrupt. None of that happened. It was like Tubb was, gasp, an ACTUAL EXPERIENCED AUTHOR!!!! Oh Myrtle, say it ain’t so! I can be a picky reader. A word choice, while acceptable, will give me that bump in the road feeling if it’s not the exact correctly used word. It might not be the meaning but how it flows with the words around it. Words are like Lego pieces. One might do adequately, but another will fit better with its neighbors and a good author knows how to work them together. Tubb has that skill and that artistry.
That kind of thing can be subjective, so I know it’s not a big selling point, but it gives me hope for the rest of the series (however long it is. I believe it’s 30+ books?). Even if the stories themselves aren’t the greatest, I’m hoping the writing itself will carry me on through. If the stories are good, then that will be bonus! I feel like I’m in a Win Win scenario here.
Score for the Good Guys!
★★★★☆
From Wikipedia.org
Summary – Click to Open
Gath is a world with a unique tourist attraction: a mountain-sized white noise amplifier. With no indigenous economy other than the tourist slave labor trade, Dumarest struggles to break free from this dead-end world. Dumarest becomes attached to the retinue of the Matriarch of Kund and unwittingly finds himself embroiled in the vicious and complex political intrigues of the Matriarch’s court. After some keen detective work from Dumarest and the ensuing deadly battle with the Cyclan, Dumarest prevails and escapes from the backwater planet.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: A King’s Ship Series: Empire Rising #2 Author: David Holmes Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 314 Words: 122K
From the Publisher and Bookstooge.blog
The war with China is over. But for Captain James Somerville there is a task still unfinished.
Former Politburo Intelligence Minister Chang has evaded capture and escaped from Chinese space. Declared a war criminal by the UN and British law courts, James is given the Royal Space Navy’s newest exploration cruiser and sent after Chang.
His chase will threaten to stir up old rivalries and take him to the edge of explored space. What he will discover there will radically reshape humanity’s position in the galaxy and throw him into a series of desperate battles. Alone and outnumbered he will come to realize what it really takes to command a King’s Ship.
And that means finding a Lost Colony with a secret (they have skillz! And have pirated Space Briton’s ships), finding aliens, finding MORE aliens and then killing lots of aliens. And finding out that there are even more aliens (even though the humans don’t realize the discovery for what it is at the time).
I was pretty happy with this. While there are some impressive space battles (where we once again count every missile down until it explodes or something), we also get some British Space Marine action. Boo yah! These guys are almost as tough as regular American Space Soldiers, so you know in the big scheme of things they’re pretty badass. And they’re even all squishy on the inside and have a bonding moment, awwwww. Thankfully, that doesn’t last too long before they get back to killing aliens.
The Big Bad Communist from the first book has escaped and Captain Happy Pants is tasked with secretly hunting him down. And boy does he kick some applecarts over in that process. India is caught with its hands fully in the Space Communist cookie jar and whines about it. Captain Happy doesn’t care, nor should he, he’s got a Space United Nations mandate! And Ensign Chicky Boo is now Admiral/Captain/Commander/Whatever Chicky Boo and is helping out. But a sexy Lost Human Politician gets in the way until Captain Happy Pants puts her aside because he still loves the British Space Princess. It’s a real Space Soap Opera! Find out next episode who has the alien baby!!! (not really, but come on, you had to see that coming).
Once again, I really enjoyed this. It hits the Space Opera itch that I have (that I’m not getting scratched by Anspach & Cole with their Galaxy’s Edge series, boo, hiss) and while it has more spaceship battles than I really care for, it does have more than enough ground pounder action to keep me happy. Space Marines for da win baby!
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by 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
Synopsis:
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.
My Thoughts:
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.
