I didn't get very far in Battlefield Earth, maybe twenty pages. it's a dreadful book, as plodding and padded as anything by J. K. Rowling, and at least she's capable of the occasional sparkling description or flight of fancy. Battlefield Earth is just grotty and nasty. I feel like it really says something about the Caltech experience that I preferred to hide in my room reading flippin' Battlefield Earth to Caltech student life. because I actually finished the book, though I'm pretty sure I was fairly racing through the last several hundred pages. looking through the book now is like a reminder of those Caltech days, a time capsule of sorts.
cw: talk of bigotry in Battlefield Earth
of course it's sexist: Hubbard wrote manly muscular heroes and "snarling villainy villains" (to borrow a phrase from Todd in the Shadows) and women are ornamental to both. it's spectacularly ableist: there's a quisling human character named—I'm not joking—Brown Limper Staffor, who is evil because he's crippled and should have been killed at birth (this is textual) and who ends up literally copying the style and mannerisms of the Chancellor of the Third Reich while working to betray the hero to the evil Psychlos. it's racist...there's an "alien" race called (I'm gonna ROT13 the slur) gur Puvaxbf and who have stereotypical "Oriental" mannerisms like they were the Neimoidian baddies from George Lucas's Star Wars prequels.
so why on Earth did I read this garbage at all? I used to have some absurd personal principle about always finishing books—I gave up on that principle a long while ago. but I sort of remember thinking there was at least something going on with Battlefield Earth, plot-wise. it's sort of like the movie Independence Day, which is also bad but still has you rooting for the valiant humans, just a bit. I didn't want to see Bill Pullman or Will Smith get greased by alien invaders, did you? well I kinda wanted the ridiculous Jonnie Goodboy Tyler to win, too. I was sucked in, just a little bit, by Hubbard's Hjelmdallermann (the reference is to trashy fiction from Disco Elysium by the way: https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Hjelmdallermann:_The_Man_from_Hjelmdall)
I feel just a bit ashamed, in truth. maybe this time round I should root for the Psychlos. they're L. Ron Hubbard villains and therefore stand no chance...so maybe they're really the good guys?
~Chara of Pnictogen