12-04-2018, 03:52 PM | #1 | |
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L. Ron Hubbard - How good are his SF novels?
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12-04-2018, 04:35 PM | #2 | |
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I also read the first I forget how many pages of The Invaders Plan, when those Mission: Earth books were being advertised like crazy and crowding the bestseller lists* It was, in a word, dreck. I like a lot of the old time pulp authors. I didn't want to dismiss LRH because of the Scientology wackiness. I feel fairly confident that without his church, he would be out of print and unremembered. Last edited by ZodWallop; 12-04-2018 at 04:38 PM. |
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12-04-2018, 04:41 PM | #3 |
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I quickly dropped every one of his books I tried. For me they are just bleh.
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12-04-2018, 04:56 PM | #4 |
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I actually enjoyed Battlefield Earth when I read it (as a high schooler). I got through the first couple books of Mission: Earth before I couldn't do any more.
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12-04-2018, 05:46 PM | #5 | |
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12-05-2018, 12:27 PM | #6 | |
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The former is a pretty decent piece of science fiction. The latter is a conglomeration of the worst bits of old radio (and early video) serials held together with mediocre writing. I once had the entire series in hardcover which I got for a dollar a book from a warehouse sale. I managed to crawl through four or five volumes before I had to give up, and that's back when I had a scarcity of reading material and little sense of quality. |
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12-05-2018, 01:55 PM | #7 | |
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I do have Final Blackout. The Frazetta cover suckered me in. Don't know if I'll ever read it though. |
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12-05-2018, 01:57 PM | #8 |
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It really is, to my mind, a great book, but of course everyone's tastes differ. It bears absolutely no comparison to the dreadful "Mission Earth" series.
Last edited by HarryT; 12-05-2018 at 02:04 PM. Reason: Typo |
12-05-2018, 02:36 PM | #9 | |
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12-05-2018, 02:40 PM | #10 |
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Indeed. L. Ron is the author we all love to hate because of his crackpot "religion", but we should keep in mind the fact that he was a decent SF author. Perhaps not one of the immortals, but certainly a competent professional.
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12-05-2018, 03:48 PM | #11 |
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You are correct, I was indeed getting Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth mixed up. Oops.
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12-05-2018, 05:33 PM | #12 | |||
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It's not great, but it's not absolutely horrible. (Although parts are great and parts are absolutely horrible, it kind of averages out to "meh".) A lot of the "satire" is heavy-handed, and after reading a few volumes you'll know all of Hubbard's bugaboos, since he lays it on thick about the things he had an axe to grind. It can be quite funny when he's not going over-the-top, and reads quickly even though it desperately needed to be edited—with a freaking axe. If it had been edited properly, and Hubbard had been forced to whittle it down to a trilogy's worth of content, it would have been much, much better. But of course he was next to god in Scientology and absolutely no one was going to suggest anything beyond minor edits, and even then they had to be careful about how they suggested them. The story of the editing process is quite interesting, and explains a lot. Quote:
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12-05-2018, 06:00 PM | #13 | |
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The religion and general aura of luridness and sleaze that surrounds him is just a bonus. Last edited by ZodWallop; 12-05-2018 at 06:05 PM. |
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12-05-2018, 06:12 PM | #14 |
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12-06-2018, 05:09 AM | #15 |
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Here's a story about the making of Mission Earth by the guy who claims to have been the one who was tasked with trying to whip it into shape. It's an old post from 2000.
Hubbard's "Mission Earth" - the rest of the story by Robert Vaughn Young. Here it is as a downloadable PDF on Mega. Last edited by Fluribus; 12-06-2018 at 05:15 AM. |
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