Surely there have got to be hundreds if not thousands of better sf writers than Hubbard out there, with many many volumes sitting there yellowing and unloved secondhand. Why waste precious time on 4th rate rubbish?
Well… There’s the Rub. Who’s to say it rubbish? Just because it’s your opinion… Doesn’t make it fact. I happened to like the series. So did other people on this forum. That’s why I wrote to ignore the naysayers on this forum and just read the books for your self. What if back in the early 90’s somebody told me that this series was crap and forget about it. If I had listened to them I would have never read it. I’ll point out, that I enjoyed the series. Was it the best thing I’ve ever read? No… But I still enjoyed it. I know that my opinion does not make it fact either and I’m not saying read the books because I enjoyed them. I am saying that if you are reading this forum, it’s because you have some interest in the series. Just read them already! Then you can form your own opinion!
Or, don’t read them, and enjoy still having some functional brain cells!
I for one am grateful this thread was resurrected because it is hilarious good fun.
It’s not paranoia is they really are out to get you.
I read them in college. I rooted for the bad guy.
I rooted for fire.
I read through book 8 in my late teens, I think. I was a member of the SF&F book club, and got most of the books through it. I may still have them in a box somewhere…
About the series: I remember Jettero Heller played some sort of sport really well, some idol-worship of Bugs Bunny, stuff happening in Turkey, and Gris being held captive and tortured extensively. I remember it as satire, and it was good at points, funny at others, but overall rather slow. I neglected to finish the series because I was reading other stuff before book 9 came out and eventually lost interest.
I bought the third volume of MISSION EARTH in a charity bookshop the other day. It is a hopeless farrago of nothingness. LRH had no idea of plot, of character, even of using words. To compare him with Asimov, E. E. Doc Smith, or Heinlein is an insult. Probably, LRH’s best SF book was his THE HISTORY OF MAN, which is supposed to be non-fiction - but at least it is quite interesting, delightfully absurd, and hilarious. MISSION EARTH isn’t.
I think the only person who would want to ‘read’ all ten volumes - apart from a committed Scientologist - is a researcher looking for extra proofs of LRH’s mental illness in the last years of his life. The blurb reads that THE ENEMY WITHIN is ‘rollicking, high-speed adventure.’ It isn’t. Neither is MISSION EARTH ‘a brilliantly conceived fusion of action, romance, satire and drama.’ It certainly does not confirm the author’s ‘position as one of the most versatile and talented writers of the twentieth century.’ Even more incredible is the idea that it is ‘told with biting social commentary in the great classic tradition of Swift, Wells and Orwell’ (p. 392) The nearest equivalent to MISSION EARTH is Tim La Haye’s equally interminable (and almost as unreadable) ‘Christian’ saga LEFT BEHIND. As for Hubbard’s writing ‘skills,’ they make Jeffrey Archer look like Tolstoy.
I think most people here agree with your overall assessment, but why did you pick up the 3rd book of a linear series as a starting point? Best case, what were you expecting?
I read all of them in 1992 or so. The AAFES bookstore on Fliegerhorst Kaserne didn’t have a large selection of books, I’m afraid.
They were humorous in a juvenile sense, from what I remember.
You do realize this thread was started by someone specifically asking us to tell him what we thought of the series?
I have no problem with teh books having been written by L. Ron Hubbard or even that they have themes in common with Scientology. I am unrepentant in liking Battlefield Earth which has similar crossover (horrible movie but I enjoy the book).
It is, of course, just my opinion (though one backed by having read thousands of books and so having a reasonably well developed sense of quality science fiction storytelling) that the Mission Earth series is complete trash. Poorly written, poorly plotted, and with little interesting to say.
It is ok, though, that you enjoyed them.
Were they co-authored or ghostwritten? I thought Hubbard was long gone loony by 1980 or so. Could he write at all anymore?
I never read the series, I instead listened to it as a audiobook.
I bought book three, second-hand, for something like a euro. It looked like a deliciously campy, fun space opera but I didn’t want to start with the third book in the series. I also didn’t want to send money to the LRH estate and finance that scary, stalkery cult.
What I ended up doing was, ahum, acquiring the series in audiobook format. I have to say I can fully recommend it, the production is really great, lot’s of fun sci-fi sounds and solid readings.
Some light spoilers coming up, still want to read the books maybe stop reading here.
I don’t think I got further then book 6 or 7 though, I must have lost track of it somewhere. I did really like it, for the most part you are experiencing the stereotypical adventures of a perfect in every way hero that has no real problem combating his opponents, the twist, that makes it fun, is that you see all this from the unreliable narrator, and all around horrible person, that is his opponent.
I especially like the parts where the Gris (bad guy) was saying how great something was, like say speed, or psychology, because he is the bad guy, it’s obviously L Ron’s message that these things are actually bad, however, since I think L Ron is a bit of a idiot, the frame turns around again and I’m left thinking they are both ok. This offered some nice moments where I had to stop and think through all these loops to get at the message.
I also really like the scene where the good guy, the perfect hero, saves a earth girl from a seriously grisly looking group rape scenario. He does this by efficiently and gruesomely killing her assailants. She goes into shock and is more afraid of the hero then she is of anything. Even when he later visits her in the hospital she is still too afraid of him, and thinks he is monster instead of the hero he would normally be in this scenario. Some nice commentary 
It’s unbelievably terrible.
Which is kind of a shame because the main characters start out great. One of them is an unethical screwup, and the other is a sort of clueless Superman. If you can imagine the team of Zapp Brannigan and Kif, except if Zapp was actually as wonderful as he thinks he is but was a nice guy, and Kif was an asshole, you kind of have those two. And then everything goes awry.
Anyone who can finish the series is either insane or some kind of hero. Or both.