Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (Paperback)

by L. Ron Hubbard (Author) "Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species..." (more)
Key Phrases: Sir Robert, Brown Limper, Robert the Fox (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
This title is now better remembered for being transformed into one of the worst B-movies in history. Don't blame the book, however, which is well regarded in sf circles. This 20th-anniversary edition offers the full text of the original. Galaxy Press, which launched this July, will reprint a number of Hubbard's books. If your existing copy looks as if it has been on the battlefield, this quality hardcover will make a nice replacement.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
Battlefield Earth is a magnificent, sprawling 820-page, "Star Wars"-type novel, lavishly written with wit and adventure and the occasional curlicue in plot.

This also is a novel featuring the most deliciously despicable villain of all times, the insidious Terl, member of a master race, genius, eccentric, and certifiably psychotic. (You can tell when Terl is up to something nasty by his chuckle.) Terl is introduced to the reader with the near-prophetic words, "Man is an endangered species."

The story is set in the year 3000. Our civilization had been wiped out centuries earlier by a malevolent race of conquerers known as the Psychlos, who establish a mining colony on the planet. The handful of humans remaining are considered little better than animals.

Think of the "Star Wars" sagas, and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," mix in the triumph of "Rocky I," "Rocky II" and "Rocky III" and you have captured the exhuberance, style and glory of "Battlefield Earth." -- Baltimore Evening Sun, November 14, 1982

Back in the fray after 30 years of absence is L. Ron Hubbard, one of the great formula and pulp writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Battlefield Earth is the huge, rollicking saga of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. A youth from the hills where remnants of mankind hide from a high-technology race of aliens who have occupied Earth for a thousand years, Jonnie is captured by the aliens and ends up turning their own technology against them.

The pace starts fast and never lets up.

With Battlefield Earth, Hubbard comes across as a powerful science writer comparable to Robert Heinlein. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1982

Hubbard celebrates 50 years as a pro writer with this huge (800+ pages), swarming, sometimes gripping slug-fest. The Earth has been occupied by monsters, imperial Pyschlos representing the Intergalactic Mining Corporation, who use "breathe-gas" (air is poisonous to them) and whose power derives from the closely guarded secret of teleportation. Furthermore, ambitious, devious Psychlo security chief Terl schemes to enrich himself by clandestinely mining gold, using humans as slave labor and he is soon exploiting explorer-bravo Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (holding Jonnie's girlfriend as hostage). But Jonnie, learning that breathe-gas explodes on contact with radioactive materials, quickly amasses allies, arms, equipment, and expertise for a war of liberation: he plots to doublecross the snarling Terl by substituting nuclear bombs for the gold to be teleported to planet Psychlo. -- Kirkus Review, August 1, 1982

In the year 3000, Earth and her few remaining people are dominated by the cruel Psychlo aliens whose greed for wealth and power obliterates whatever compassion may have once existed. When Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's destiny leads him from a small Rocky Mountain community to confront the tyrannical aliens, he finds himself facing insurmountable odds no mortal man could hope to conquer. An epic in science fiction adventure, the absorbing story captures the mind and imagination in this tale of an Earth-destroying future war. -- Orange County Register, Nov 14, 1982 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1050 pages
• Publisher: Bridge Pubns (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573180424
• ISBN-13: 978-1573180429
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (464 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,849,133 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining, a real page turner, July 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (Mass Market Paperback)

The book is always fun to read. I've gone through it 3 times over 12 years. Each time I read it cover to cover, straight through. The style is deliberately over-the-top, and very humorous. Hubbard creates many outrageous scenes of high tension, bigger than life and melodramatic. It can't help but bring a smile to your face, as this book presents innumerable good vs. evil conflicts in the classic tradition.

The "Psychlos" are bumbling alien psychotics, so intent on guile and treachery they can't even grab a goo-food stick without provoking a knock down, drag out fight. Through sheer luck, they've stumbled upon technologies which empower them to rule most of the know universes (all 16 of them). The ponderous, overwhelming Psychlo bureaucracy, replete with the cruelest and pettiest, middle level paper pushers imaginable, sets up the perfect "evil empire" that Johnny Good Boy Tyler defeats at every turn, overcoming incredible odds and triumphing over treachery with intelligence, bravery, and unbelievable luck. The almost stereo-typical conflicts in the book are a basis for it's humor and entertainment value, given the author's talent for creating conflicts of epic, even galactic, proportions.

Although I normally read more intellectualy structured fiction, Hubbard somehow has the knack of creating an entertaining story that is fun to read despite it's intentionally low-brow approach. If you like funny, adventure/sci-fi, you will probably like this book a lot.

I liked this book more than the Hubbard "Dekaology". Battlefield Earth is pretty long, but generally holds my interest throughout. It's almost like (2) books, with an initial phase related just to earth, and a final phase, involving the 16 known universes. The Dekalogy in contrast had a lot of underlying bitterness, and was REALLY long, perhaps because Hubbard was near the end of his life, and his goal was to write the longest sci-fi book, not necessarily the best.

I can think of many "serious" sci-fi authors I prefer to L. Ron Hubbard, but I'm hard pressed to think of one who is more entertaining. I look at Battlefield Earth as equal parts Douglas Adams, Tom Swift, and Asimov. Hubbard is from the same generation of classic sci-fi authors as Heinlin, Clark, Asimov, et. al., but in Battlefield Earth, employs a more humorous and easy-going style, without the dated idealism and self-importance found in many older sci-fi classics.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cut This Book Some Slack!, December 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (Mass Market Paperback)

Battlefield Earth was much better than I thought it would be.I will even say that I liked it very much. I'm not a Scientologist ora fan of banal space opera. In fact I'm a big fan of the critically acclaimed and highly intelligent Dune series.

Now, 'B.E.' is no Dune (that's for sure!), but it is much more sophisticated than its detractors want you to know. I think 'B.E.' has a lot of strengths; despite its old fassioned pulp novel style and weak charaterization. It portays a universe dominated by ruthless monopoly corporations; and in doing so provides an amusing and enlightening social/economic satire. The Psychlos (creatures that seem to control most of the Cosmos' vast economic system) are exaggerated 80's yuppies--greedy, gluttonous and quarrelsome. They are stripping the Earth for its raw materials with no respect for our planet's fragile ecology and treat humans like vermin under their enormous feet. They have presumably done the same to an infinite number of planets and sepcies in the galaxys under their control. One of the aliens gets the notion that humans (previously thought of as totally useless pests) might make good slaves for one of his private money making schemes (his superiors can't know about it) so he secretly trains and educates a group of primitive humans who turn out to be smarter than he thinks and hungry for revenge against an enemy which has oppressed their world for over 1000 years. And this is merely the set-up. Hundreds of plot twists keep the reader guessing till the very end. The book is crammed with action, fascinating alien species, satire and exotic technology. Science fiction fans should give it a shot and see if they like it. Its not for every sci-fi fan, but it may be better than you have been led to believe.

70 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable mind candy, Scientology aspects are well hidden, February 20, 1999

By	Modemac (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (Audio Cassette)

In regards to the "love-it vs. hate-it," "Scientology vs. critics" reviews of "Battlefield Earth" seen here, I should state that I have been an outspoken critic of Scientology for the past several years. Nevertheless, I will still say that "Battlefield Earth" is an entertaining book -- it's far from the "greatest science fiction saga ever written," and it really bogs down in the middle, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless. In fact, it was the first of Hubbard's books that I ever read: I picked it up and read it for the sheer challenge of finishing a thousand-page paperback book. Much of the book is juvenile and laughably silly (such as the evil Brown Limper Staffor and his obsessive hatred for the superhero Johnnie Goodboy Tyler), and some of Hubbard's "science" is so implausible as to be laughable. In one section of the book, the good guys teleport a satellite to a point one light-year away from the planet Psycho, and they use video enhancement technology to enlarge the image at "six trillion power" magnification to get a view of the planet. Then there's the idea that by placing five nuclear bombs next to each other, they will all go off, one after the other. I'll leave it to better writers than I to point out the obvious flaws to these...but despite their being crucial to the plot, they don't detract from the fact that I enjoyed the book. About half of it is full of rollicking action and intrigue (dampened somewhat by ludicrous stereotypical "good guys" and "bad guys"). Hubbard's Scientology ideas are there within the book, but they're deeply hidden. You'd have to know about Hubbard's obsessive hatred of psychiatry and the way Scientologists refer to psychiatrists and psychologists as "psychs" to understand why he chose "Psychlos" as the name for the evil alien overlords of the whole universe; likewise, the Scientology belief that "man is basically good" is what ensures that the final victory of the book will not leave humanity open to corruption on its own, after the story has ended.

The writing varies from a furious, energetic pace (when the battles and double-dealings are taking place) to tediously slow (when Hubbard plays the material for more additional sub-plots), and as has already been said, the overall tone of the book is that of a junvenile pulp fiction novel. To compare this silliness with grand space opera like E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books would be sacrilege, but "Battlefield Earth" does stand on its own as an entertaining story. I had trouble getting started with it, and it did bog down, but the final third of the book is fast reading to the very end. This book inspired me to go out and learn more about L. Ron Hubbard and his works...but if you do want to read more, be warned that most of Hubbard's writings are far sillier than what you'll see in "Battlefield Earth." After this book, I worked my way through his ten-book "Mission Earth" series...which are nothing but a blatant commercial for Scientology, and which are so unbelievably awful that you may want to read them just to see if they live up to their reputation as one of the worst pieces of "science fiction" drivel ever published. "Battlefield Earth" is an entertaining, fun read...but after this, you may want to read Hubbard's other good book, "Fear." And then you can visit my Web site and learn about his most famous science fiction creation: the "church" of Scientology.