Battlefield Earth

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

But my point was (and still is) that BE is a lesser work. I’ve enjoyed plenty of novels that were light entertainment, but I’ve never considered them to be among the best I’ve ever read. I’ve enjoyed lesser works certainly, but I knew that they were lesser works.

The fact that everyone who claims to have liked it also seems to say “but that was when I was a teenager” seem to indicate it was fairly juvenile (which is what I meant by a boy’s book; I didn’t mean to imply anything about the readers). I’d be interested in seeing if they felt that way if they read it again.

If its time was 1938, you’d be right. Doc Smith wrote a lot of that sort of gee-whiz space opera. By 1982, though, BE was hopelessly dated. That’s why it appealed so much to teenagers (I’ve yet to see anyone who read it as an adult and liked it) – there was very little of that sort of old-fashioned clunky space opera. But 1982 featured DOWNBELOW STATION, THE PRIDE OF CHANUR, OATH OF FEALTY, AT THE EYE OF OCEAN (by Hilbert Schenk, who was one of the best at writing a fast-paced adventure story), DREAM PARK, and THE MANY COLORED LAND, all of which were much superior entertainments (and much better novels) than BE.

Faint praise indeed. If an author can’t do that, he has no business being published. And I’m sure the plot did seem excellent. It had, after all, been used hundreds of times before Hubbard. Young hero overthrowing evil alien overlords was not exactly anything new in 1942, let alone 1982.

42

But my point was (and still is) that BE is a lesser work. I’ve enjoyed plenty of novels that were light entertainment, but I’ve never considered them to be among the best I’ve ever read. I’ve enjoyed lesser works certainly, but I knew that they were lesser works.

The fact that everyone who claims to have liked it also seems to say “but that was when I was a teenager” seem to indicate it was fairly juvenile (which is what I meant by a boy’s book; I didn’t mean to imply anything about the readers). I’d be interested in seeing if they felt that way if they read it again.

If its time was 1938, you’d be right. Doc Smith wrote a lot of that sort of gee-whiz space opera. By 1982, though, BE was hopelessly dated. That’s why it appealed so much to teenagers (I’ve yet to see anyone who read it as an adult and liked it) – there was very little of that sort of old-fashioned clunky space opera. But 1982 featured DOWNBELOW STATION, THE PRIDE OF CHANUR, OATH OF FEALTY, AT THE EYE OF OCEAN (by Hilbert Schenk, who was one of the best at writing a fast-paced adventure story), DREAM PARK, and THE MANY COLORED LAND, all of which were much superior entertainments (and much better novels) than BE.

Faint praise indeed. If an author can’t do that, he has no business being published. And I’m sure the plot did seem excellent. It had, after all, been used hundreds of times before Hubbard. Young hero overthrowing evil alien overlords was not exactly anything new in 1942, let alone 1982 (ever hear of Buck Rogers?).

43

Chuck, maybe you could explain this to me. You keep harping on the fact that BE is a “lesser” SF work. What does this mean? Did I miss all the posts where it was refered to as “Vastly superior to I, Robot”? Are we in an apreciation of SF class in which our opinions will be graded? You are starting to remind me of Dr Pritchert, the guy who wrote the introduction to the poetry book Mr.Keating used in “Dead Poets Society” To wit “…plot the books objective on a horizontal scale…” Pu-leese! All that anyone here has said is that they enjoyed the book. I enjoyed it, even when I reread it a month ago in preperation for the movie. I am 33, does that now mean that my apreciation gland is stuck in a juvinile phase of development? What a treat that would be, to be able to view the world with the unvarnished hope and unbridled enthusiasm of a 17 year old! I really don’t understand folks who point their collective noses at the sky whenever anyone else admits to enjoying something that they consider " lesser". Hey, you don’t like it? Here’s a clue, Bozo, Don’t read it!!! These are the same group of people who have been forcing Jr. High students to read “that poignent(sp?) classic of adolesence” A Seperate Peace. ASP Sucks! So you pushed him outta the tree. Who cares. I wish I had pushed you outta the tree so we wouldn’t be subjected to this crap you call a novel, John Knowles. So please tell us what you hope to acomplish, Chuck, by pointing out that BE isn’t Hamlet at every opportunity. I am honestly curious.

On an unrelated note,is Staroamer’s Fate still in print? If not, how many copies were sold( How likely would I be to find it in a used book shop?) I would like to read it if I can find it. What’s it about?

44

I gotta go back up to a previous point.

I said:

Then Irishman said:

Fine, true. But if you think that means they make a dime from the film’s box-office, then you apparently don’t know how rights work.

Regarding the movie:

I saw it, like I said I would. It was, to put it bluntly, brain-meltingly bad. No, it wasn’t as awful as Wing Commander or Supernova or any of the off-brand dreck dumped into cinemas every spring, but it is certainly the worst big wanna-be summer event movie I’ve ever seen.

More in my review, when I post it on my site, in the next day or two (crossed fingers – life is crazy, no time to do nothin’ no more).

45

RTA, can you provide a cite for that claim? I have never heard that before, and I find it an extraordinary claim. I’ve never heard of any celebrity breaking ties with CoS.

46

you got it right.
THE MOVIE SUCKS!!! IF YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE IT, WAIT FOR IT TO BE BROADCAST ON NETWORK TV
sorry, it was that bad. I love SF, and i respect great writers (though i don’t think of L.Ron as one of them) and i respect that other people have their own opinions about what is good and what isn’t (even if their wrong) especially when they like L.Ron and the likes.
It really was bad. so i won’t mind spoiling it for those of you who have the fortune to have not seen it.

  • Where does a “caveman” over 1000 years after having any connection to any technology whatsoever find the ability to learn how to fly a fighter jet in less then 7 days and with such amazing accuracy and develop the intuition to say “i got him, i’m on his tail” while chasing a much more advanced ship and take it out kamikaze style except for the ejection button bit.
  • How convenient that the aliens have transporter technology that enables the “caveman” to so wittingly understand how to arm a nuclear warhead and bring it to their home planet and so again conveniently set it off in an atmosphere that reacts to the explosion world wide destroying the entire planet completely.

thats enough. The movie was bad, the story sucked, the idea is repulsive by my SF standards. Save your dough, go see Gladiator.

The opinions expressed here are solely the opinions of myself and not meant in any way shape or form to insult anyone except L.Ron who unfortunately cannot defend himself so i apologize for the cheap shot but shit, thats just the way it is.

47

I need to add my voice to those yelling “Don’t go see this film”. As a complete review is probably Pit-worthy, I’ll just mention some of the highlights.

  1. John Travolta - graduate of the William Shatner school of overacting.

  2. An increadibly stupid alien race which has somehow managed to conquer the galaxy.

  3. Thousand year old equipment which works perfectly.

  4. Predictible plot.

ugh.

48

For what it’s worth, here’s my 2¢ on the B.E. topic.

The best thing you could do when you go see the movie is walk up to the ticket booth and say, “I’d like a ticket to see Gladiator!” (Or just about any other movie.)

I read half the book when I was in H.S. After the first 500 pages or so, I lost interest. The problem with the book is that the climax to the story was halfway through and a readers attention can only be held for so many pages after the story ends.

The acting in the movie was not the best but the filmogrophy sucked!!! (All the angled shots made me dizzy and distracted from the movie.)

The effects were almost non-existent. How do you make John look 8 ft. tall? Don’t show him next to the ‘humans.’ The slow steps the psyclos took were supposed to make them look bigger. If the psyclos come from a high gravity planet, then they should be leaping across the ground, not taking a leasurely stroll.

In the end, I felt that the money I spent to see “Lost In Space” was better spent.

In comparison, B.E. was a far better movie than Starship Troopers. B.E. at least made an attempt to follow the original idea of the book.

Was B.E. better than S.W. or S.T.? I beleive that’s like describing the taste of an orange by the taste of an apple. Each genre has its good points and its bad points. Don’t ask what was better between two genres, but ask what was good within that genre.

49

I registered just to make this post and save many of you a horrible surprise…

EARTHLINK is owned by the CoS. Fronted by a large CoS benefactor, and founded by a CoS devout leader.

Recently (last year) they tried to apply CoS principles to that business; ie greed, theft for a higher purpose, gain at any cost, deceit and deception… and got caught. Causing customer disatisfaction to raise to over 48%. To whitewach those numbers, because the SEC and FCC and many DA’s began to investigate, they purchased SPRINT and MINDSPRING, hence adding many “satisfied” customers to the pot. Now with a customer dissatisfaction of 12% they are “well within government acceptable limits”. Ahh the secret backroom dealings!

Skye Dayton and Gary Betty, are riding their customers to their version of planetary heaven, while beating the THETANS out of your wallets for you. Want more?.. check their customer service policies… they dont refund, unless you bring the government in (at some level)this is a common complaint by many customers, and they are the worst CSR’s nationwide as polled by the FCC.

Its a money front for the CoS, who cant possibly “launder” as much money when using the “church” basis with the IRS, so the church got a business front, and went hog wild… hence they could not fund the production of BE until now, becuase until now, they didnt have a business front to hide the income.

OOOOPS!

Oh and whoever said this was privately funded by Eurotrash, ask for a public disclosure of funding through your Hollywood links… its a legal request, and I already know what it says… and it says nothing about EUROTRASH funding it, just ambiguity covered business names and donors and trusts.

Anyways… there you all go.

50 
 I'm sure someone else might have pointed this out, but MCI Worldcom is buying Sprint. Not Earthlink, which gave up on it's acquistion of Mindspring.
 I'm not really sure you'd believe this, as you seem to have lost your grasp of a lot of things, namely reality.
 And no, Bernie isn't a Scientcrapologist.
51

Education is free… ignorance expensive.

Call customer service my friend, patron saint of nothing, you will get a greeting of “thank you for calling Sprint-Earthlink Customer Service… hold please”, or is that also not real?

you can get that number from the homepage of Earthlink.

I know from personal knowledge that both companies were aquired and owned, and that beats your speculation any day.

52

[link/]http://www.earthlink.net/about/history/index.html[link]

Above is the link to the page, where upon scrolling down to February news, you will see; DETAILS OF A MERGER BETWEEN MINDSPRING AND SPRINT AND EARTHLINK.

But that too is just a multimedia, mass hallucination that we are all having too? Did you also know that most customers of both companies aquired dont even know they are now owned by Earthlink?

53

weirddave: Me too! To all of what you said. I’m 26 and I read the book a couple of months ago and I’m not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed it. It really irks me that people won’t admit to reading or enjoying something considered to be “lesser”!

Here’s a big news flash, Chuck: Some poeple like to read for fun! A lot of people read to “escape”. They like the fact that they don’t have to think too much or analyze the writing or whatever. Did you know that before there was t.v. there were books? That’s what people used to do before they zoned out to “The Brady Bunch”. They read! And not everything was a classic. Not everything won awards. Not being an award winner doesn’t make it bad.

You said “I’ve enjoyed lesser works certainly, but I knew that they were lesser works.” What’s that supposed to mean? That because you’re a pro SF writer who’s been reading SF since before the dawn of time and I’m not, my judgement is faulty?

54

I honestly don’t see why y’all are jumping down realitychuck’s throat… the flames here have basically reinforced his point! Let’s see if I can encapsulate this: (all italics and bold within quotes are mine - O.)

realitychuck:

And here are two answers that stuck out…
weirddave:

weirddave goes on to list the authors he’s read, which is an impressive collection indeed.

sunshine:

So, we have two people who’ve read a lot of SF and say BE wasn’t that good an example of the genre. chuck isn’t saying it wasn’t a good book, just not a good SF novel, and anyone who might think it is arguably has not read a lot of SF with which to compare it. Sunshine and weirddave are backing him up with their assertions.
Nowhere is chuck insulting the intelligence of anyone who has (unlike me) read BE and enjoyed it.

So what’s the beef? realitychuck is expressing his opinion about the quality of Hubbard’s writing, an opinion that may actually carry a little more weight given his position as a writer of science fiction. He’s not saying he thinks you’re stupid for enjoying it.

55

I’m found that professional writers tend to have more refined tastes than the average lay reader. As some people have pointed out in various gentle ways, this is not necessarily an advantage.

My taste in books has almost obscenely narrowed since I finished my first novel. I’m trying to widen it again, slowly, but it takes patience. It’s hard to enjoying reading when I can spot flaws. Soon, I’m thinking about them more than I’m thinking about the story, and then I never finish the damn book. I have a similar experience when reading old short stories of mine - it’s like looking at a wrecked car with no salvageable parts.

I read BE a long time ago - 16? 17? and still recall it fondly. I’ve reread it once since then as an adult, and still liked it, though I thought it could have been massively trimmed, with Hubbard’s constant pseudo-technical babbling simplified, or at least reworked into something less trite. His tone was also rather condescending, built for a 13-year-old ear. Then again, my hat is off to anyone who can put a thousand pages together and make it even vaguely comprehensible. I can appreciate the editing involved.

It’s a pretty funny book, especially the last half, which I understand doesn’t make the movie cut. It takes some imagination to have Scotland save the Earth through a ruthless intergalactic banking maneuver. I particularity liked how the various alien races, arriving after the Psy’s demise, fought each other over who got to reconquer the planet.

I’m sure the movie tears the good parts of the first half of the book to shreds. Screenwriters are paid well to do that. Frankly, the first half does not complete much of a story in itself, so that sort of dooms the project from the beginning. I found the problems Johnnie faced after finally defeating Terl much more daunting and interesting.

Writing-competence-wise, I wouldn’t call BE a ‘lesser’ work, solely on the grounds that comparing it to the works of SF giants like Asimov or Herbert or Dick is rather a mismatch. They wrote in completely different styles. I daresay they would have had immense difficulty pulling off something like BE. Hubbard’s brand of half-witless, half-inspired adventure… no, it would be like asking Jack Schafer of “Shane” fame to write Dickens. Hmm. I bet David Brin could pull it off, except about twenty times better. For some reason I’m thinking of “Startide Rising”.

Some writers are spare, some wordy, some popular-oriented, some exclusive and literary, some better at character than story, the opposite, etc. I think Hubbard achieved what he apparently set out to do - write a wild, entertaining adventure with some heavily submerged references to his religion. If he failed, it was in the last part - I didn’t come away from reading it with an intense hatred of shrinks and a desire to check my theta level, thank god.

56

O,

I do see your point, but that is not what I have been protesting. Let’s use cars as an example. Take, oh, say a Chevy Cavalier. Is it a good car? Sure. Do you think many people dream of the day they can own a Cavilier? Probobly not. Is there anything wrong with a Cavalier? Not in the least. It’s mearly middle of the pack transportation. Same with BE. It’s a fun book. It’s not the best SF written, but everything dosen’t have to, indeed, can not, be the best. I enjoyed it. ( BTW, for those wondering, I am not a Scientologist) Chuck’s attitude on this thread has been, “If you enjoyed that, you don’t know SF very well”. Well, I do have a knowledge of SF AND I enjoyed BE. I don’t eat steak every night. Some nights, chicken is more what I’m in the mood for. To throw your nose up at something because it is not the “best” is elietest BS, and that is what I have been objecting to.
BTW, Chuck, do you perhaps teach a lit class at Sienna? That is exactly the setting for which your attitude in this discussion IS apropriate. I looked at the Sienna website, but couldn’t find you listed as facualty. They do not have a single facualty list that I could find, though, so I may have missed your name.

57

I disagree, Dave. I honestly don’t think Chuck is denigrating anyone for enjoying it. I’m no writer (at least I don’t pretend to be one except for a couple notebooks’ worth of stuff in a trunk!) but I know a lousy novel when I see one. And it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying it and living the adventure contained within. It doesn’t stick with me and make me think about the deep material or psychological truths within (generally 'cos it doesn’t have any) but nonetheless it’s a fairly enjoyable read. I strongly suspect BE would fall into this category, were I to have the time to read it.
Anyway. I’ve overspent my $.02 on this one so I’ll stop hijacking it and hope I haven’t killed it off for the movie reviewers.

58

Cervaise said:

I will admit to being woefully uninformed to the nature of ownership rights, and the deal worked out between CoS and Elie Samaha. However, is it possible that the CoS is getting a percentage of the box office proceedes as part of the deal?

Regardless, the CoS is certainly banking on the notion that promoting LRon with this movie to publicize him as a great SF writer will then draw more interest to new people to check out his other books - like Dianetics. In that regard it is a marketing ploy for them.

But that is, I guess, outside the argument of whether they are directly profiting from the movie. Wasn’t there some comment back there about the CoS getting a percentage of the merchandising? (Given the movie’s rep, guess we don’t have to worry much about that.)

59

Uhh…I saw the movie and I thought it was a waste of my $7. If it was inspired by Scientology teachings who cares…no one will remember it after a month.

60

*The aformentioned was brought to you by the Saint of Apathy{/i]

I am one degree from John Travlolta. I got to interview the band “Nine Days”, one day after they taped VH-1’s “The List”. On that show they co-starred with John Travolta. (I know, but how often cn someone say that ?)

The previews for BE look cool, and I don’t doubt that it is not based on a Sci theory. I for one, am methodist. If they did a movie version of “Diabetics” (thats not the name, but who wants to do the work of evil), I would not see it. If BE is cool sci-fi, I will go see it. The critics are saying it is a bust. Who knows ??