I live over in Europe, so I get a little behind the times when it comes to news, especially entertainment news (The Beach is just coming out here). I just heard that John Travolta is playing the lead in the movie “Battlefield Earth” (Scientology shocker that he is in this movie…). He was quoted as saying that “Battlefield Earth” has been voted the “Best Sci-Fi book of the century” or something like that. I also read something similar in The Economist magazine a while back.
Is this true? Really? I thought it was such a shit book that I threw it away after a quarter of the way through. His own prologue about writing a “true sci-fi novel” was so full of kak that its amazing I read further. I find it hard to believe that it is considered the “best” when there are so many brilliant writers/books out there that blow ol Ron out of the water. Not only masters like Orwell, Herbert, Card, Asimov, Heinlein & more but authors like CJ Cherryh, Miller, Burgess, Huxley, Banks, etc etc shoot “Battlefield Earth” down in a heartbeat. Heck, even some of Hubbard’s other stuff was ten times better than that waste of paper.
Am I off, or did someone lie with stats again? Did they walk into a Dianetics workshop and hand out questionaires or what?
I don’t know exactly what would be considered the best myself, but even if one is considering other factors besides plot and basic readability such as social or historical significance, wouldn’t “1984” or “Dune” or “Enders Game” or any 1 of about 50 on your bookshelf be better?
I don’t know anyone who is NOT a Scientologist that liked “Battlefield Earth.” Science fiction fandom really wanted to like it, because Hubbard had once been a great writer, back in the John Campbell/“Astounding Science Fiction” days.
It’s a great book if you need a doorstop or paperweight, though. Only James Michner published thicker paperbacks.
The claim that BATTLEFIELD EARTH is the best of all time is laughed at by anyone in the field. It never won (or was even nominated for) a Hugo or Nebula, the two main legitimate SF awards. The people who named it seem to be create solely to give the book the award; no one had heard of the organization until a few months ago. There’s speculation that they are a Scientologist front.
The book was barely a blip on the SF screen. (Drop by the newsgroups at http://webnews.sff.net and ask what people think about it.)
Critically, it was agreed that BATTLEFIELD EARTH was a decent novel for 1940. However, it was published in the 1980s and was hopelessly dated and out of step to anyone who read SF after 1950.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
I believe the reference is to some on-line poll from '98 or so, which was heavily influenced by en bloc voting by Scientologists and Randites (the other top books were all by Ayn Rand).
This shows the essential Chicago ambiance of on-line polls, in which the operative strategy is to"vote early and vote often."
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
I took the book-tapes out of the library for BE to pass the time on a drive across Canada. I didn’t know about scientology back then. It wasn’t a great story but entertaining enough to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel.
Whew! I’m glad people are saying this…I was getting worried.
Thanks for the affirmation that people actually have taste in literature these days.
I’ve stayed far FAR away from online surveys ever since I read one stateing that Tori Amos was the #1 most important individual the 20th century had produced…
Exactly, precisely so. Of COURSE nobody outside the cult likes that piece of crap book by that infamous hack loon.
Anecdote: during the 80s there were reports from bookstore employees (this story comes from Los Angeles, BTW) that vans would pull up and discharge a bunch of people, who would then go and buy every copy of “B.E.” and “Dianetics” and drive away. The bookstore had little choice but to report those books as best sellers, and the national media in turn reported that these books sold widely.
Within a few days they would receive more copies from the cult’s publishing arm … Imagine the employees’ surprise when they opened the boxes and found that many of the books had the bookstore’s own price tags already affixed to them!
Well, I read BE when it came out in the 80s; I was in my late teens. I thought it was reasonably good. I’ve reread it since with much the same opinion. (For the record, I will reread anything but a truly DETESTED book if I’m out of new ones. I run out of new ones a lot.) I certainly wouldn’t call it a “great” book, but it beats some SF I’ve read.
And it does make a great bookend, paperweight, doorstop, etc. Did they actually publish a hardcover of this book? If so, is it possible for anyone (excepting professional weightlifters, of course) to actually pick it up? It was always quite clear to me that this was actually two books, squashed into one for some reason.
On the other hand, I’ve never been able to read anything else by LRH; I give up before getting through the first couple of chapters.
I am not a Scientologist, nor do I play one on television.
Just thought you probably needed a dissenting opinion.
The adage “Knowledge is Power” is incorrect. The correct formulation is “Knowledge that other people don’t have is Power”. - The Donald
