Battlefield Earth (novel)

Did You Know?

• The Psychlos stand up to 9 feet tall and weigh up to 1000 pounds, and their home planet Psychlo is located in another universe with distinct physical laws lacking radioactive elements.
• According to Nielsen BookScan, Battlefield Earth sold 29,000 copies between 2001 and 2005.

Plot

In the year 3000, the alien Psychlos have ruled Earth for a millennium, reducing humanity to fewer than 35,000 individuals living in isolated tribes. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young man from a tribe near the ruins of Denver, leaves his village after his father's death to explore the lowlands and disprove local superstitions about monsters. He is captured by Terl, the Psychlo chief of mine site security, who forces Jonnie to learn the Psychlo language. Terl, angered by an extended tour of duty on Earth, schemes to steal a gold lode in the Rockies for himself. Because uranium deposits surround the lode, making mining impossible for Psychlos, Terl uses humans as forced labor, capturing Jonnie's girlfriend Chrissy and her sister as leverage. Terl orders the Psychlo midget Ker to train Jonnie on Psychlo machinery; Ker, who is seven feet tall and friendlier than other Psychlos, becomes Jonnie's friend. Jonnie and Terl travel to Scotland, where Jonnie recruits 83 Scots led by Robert the Fox. Using Terl's inability to understand English, Jonnie reveals Terl's plans and plots with the Scots to reclaim Earth. Jonnie learns that the Psychlos conquered Earth by sending an armored gas drone into the troposphere, bombing all major cities and killing billions; human counterattacks with conventional and nuclear weapons failed.

Scientology-related themes

The novel reflects Hubbard's opposition to psychiatry, which he maintained after the American Psychological Association passed a resolution in 1950 stating that his book Dianetics lacked empirical support. The Psychlos are portrayed as being ruled by the Catrists ("Psychlo-Catrists" sounding similar to psychiatrists), described as evil charlatans. Catrists use surgical mind control and electroshock to maintain power, a tactic Hubbard claimed psychiatrists employed. The word "Psychlo" originally meant "brain" in the Psychlo language, indicating that the Catrists consider the entire population mental patients. A human doctor in the book recalls a "cult" called psychology that existed before the Psychlo invasion but is "forgotten now." Hubbard told fellow Scientologists in December 1980 that he wrote the story based partly on consequences he imagined if psychologists and brain-surgeons continued their practices.

Reception

Battlefield Earth received polarized mixed reviews, with some critics and readers considering it Hubbard's most enjoyable sci-fi work and a classic, while others deemed it genuinely terrible. Critics assailed the writing quality and characters: The Economist called it "an unsubtle saga, atrociously written, windy and out of control," and Analog criticized it as "a wish-fulfillment fantasy" with poorly fleshed-out characters. Punch sarcastically commended Hubbard's "excellent understanding of evil impulses" and avoidance of "frailties like love, generosity, compassion." David Langford concluded it was "dreadful and tedious beyond endurance." However, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction described it as a "rather good, fast-paced, often fascinating SF adventure yarn." Mitt Romney called it "a very fun science fiction book," and Neil Gaiman praised it as "over 1000 pages of thrills, spills, vicious aliens, noble humans" and "a tribute to the days of pulp." Shortly after release, it topped bestseller lists including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Time. By June 1983, it had sold 150,000 copies and earned $1.5 million. Stories emerged of a Church of Scientology book-buying campaign to ensure bestseller status, with church subsidiaries reportedly buying 50,000 hardback copies.

Film adaptation

The movie version of Battlefield Earth came out in May 2000 and flopped both commercially and critically, often called one of the worst films ever. Warner Bros. distributed it, Franchise Pictures produced it, and Roger Christian directed. John Travolta played Terl because he thought he was too old for the hero role, with Barry Pepper as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler and Forest Whitaker as Ker. The film earned about $29.7 million worldwide against a $73 million budget. Reviewers slammed the acting, excessive Dutch angles, effects, writing, pacing, lack of action, plot, dialogue, and inconsistencies. Franchise Pictures later faced a lawsuit and went bankrupt after inflating the film's budget fraudulently, which killed plans for a sequel covering the book's second half.