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

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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

• Mass Market Paperback: 1050 pages
• Publisher: Bridge Publications (CA) (August 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0884046818
• ISBN-13: 978-0884046813
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (466 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,614,770 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

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

By A Customer

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.

46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

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

By A Customer

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars WYSIWYG-What you see is what you get., April 22, 2000

By	S. K. Magness "skmagness" (Hayward, California USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is exactly what it says it is in the introduction, a 1930-40s style pulp fiction adventure. Those people nostalgic for this style of writing will enjoy this book. I found this book somewhat lenghty and felt it should have been 2 books (the latter half was not quite as well developed as the first half) yet it was still enjoyable none the less. This book is very reminicent of "Flash Gordon" episodes, the serial not the 70s movie. Like many novels from the 40s this book is more fantasy than science fiction. The science in this book has little relation to our current understanding of how the universe works. All in all, a fun, nostalgic read which makes very few demands on the reader.