First and foremost I believe that you have to be very pompous and pretentious in order to write a book that is over a thousand pages. There is just too much story for one book. Period. No matter how good you are at writing, no matter how good you think you may be at storytelling, you cannot write a satisfactory story that is over a thousand pages. You just can't. There is just too much story and by not splitting it up into a sequel or trilogy, you lose valuable plot and world building options. This is exactly what happened with Battlefield Earth. Hubbard is a decent author, he had an interesting concept, fairly well developed characters, and a plot that was readable, but he had too much! Because he thought he was such a great author and could fit all of his story into one volume he actually lost some of the most interesting parts. It might be that Hubbard just didn't have the skill to develop his universe as much as I imagined with the details he gave me, but I think had he sucked it up and split Battlefield Earth into three parts, hell even two, the whole thing would have been way better.
While I was reading I found his ideas, his history, and his overall setting fascinating, but, unfortunately, he didn't develop any of them nearly as well as he should have. His setting is that of Earth in the year 3000 who has been dominated by a vicious beings called Psychols. Who are these creatures? Why are they so horrible? What is their culture? Sadly Hubbard merely touches on these questions about 800 pages in. 800 pages before we know even a bit of these creatures. Sure it fit the plot, he probably couldn't have explained much about them earlier in the book, but the fact remains that he should have told us more! He introduces some 17 different universes, with hundreds of thousands of different races, all ruled over by these Psycholos. And of course he barely tells us about maybe 12 of those races, really he just mentions their name and what universe they're from. Unfortunately he doesn't really go into any real detail about anything! The entire book is just kinda brushing the histories of all these characters, a couple sentences here about the Russians, a few sentences there about the Scots, but never really much. Okay so the earth was practically wiped out a thousand years past, so perhaps the humans don't have much of a history, but if you're going make your setting as huge as 17 universes, you need to talk about them. The worst part of all this is that he was capable of telling such a compelling story, of including his audience in on what only he is privy to, but he didn't.
As I was reading a bit of my bias did bog down some of my enjoyment, mainly how hypocritical he is. A major plot that takes place in his book is that of money, corruption, and greed, yet when he died in 1986 he was worth 200 million dollars. Sure that may not be a huge sum today, what with Bill Gates and all the other tech, oil, and business giants out there, but 200 million back in 1986 is ridiculous! Really who am I to talk, I'm a hypocrite in many ways, as we all are whether we like it or not, but if you're going to create a "religion" based on money and then preach about how awful and horrible money is in your books, well, that's just too far for me!
The other feeling I got while reading Battlefield Earth was that of disbelief. I know, I know, sci-fi/fantasy stuff is suppose to be not real and what not. I know this intrinsically since these are my two favorite genres, but I do expect some realistic elements to be in a book. For example Hubbard made a big deal about how primitive and uneducated the humans were, but yet somehow they manage to learn all the nuclear technology that is left over from their past, electronics, chemistry, physics, ultra high level math, not to mention an alien language, alien math, and alien physics and chemistry. They then use all this information they masted in the space of months to annihilate an alien culture that has been ruling multiple universes for billions of years, where as millions if not billions of other, far more technologically advanced species, tried and failed to do just that. Oh yeah, and apparently they learned all there is to know about math, teleportation, and physics just watching one of the Psycholos do a series of equations for one device. As much as I love the surreal, this got annoying fast. I love strong, clever characters, but there comes a point where they stop being someone you can relate to and become super human plus seem to have the best luck in the world. I cant even count the number of times I've shaken my head at the improbable nature of some characters luck. "Jonnie bent down and at that moment the net flew right over his head" yeah, okay, no the world does not operate like that, at least not multiple times. Sure bad things happened to the characters, but supremely, unbelievable good things also happened that just scream THIS ISN'T REAL! Meh, none of it's real, but still, if you're going to go out on a limb and make up creatures at least have the decency to keep humans, and human nature the same unless you have the prowess to explain why they're so much better than we currently are. In Alastair Reynolds series he has a several human subgroups, all of which have their own unique advantages and disadvantages, not only that, but he tells us how and why his beings came to be that way. No such explanation from Hubbard. To be perfectly honest I don't think it would have been so bad had the book not been so long, I mean I can handle amazing luck and abilities for about 400-500 pages before it just gets old. I think the timescale also plays a big role, Hubbards book is all in maybe 4 years? If that. Not day by day either, skipping weeks, months, and season quite easily, so it was just like today this happened then a couple months later this happens, and then this, and on and on with the dumb luck and abilities.
Oh well, like I said earlier, if nothing else Battlefield Earth was well written, with a neat plot, and decent characters. Overall it was enjoyable, but I know for a fact had he split it up it could have been 10 times as successful as it was. As for recommending this, ehh, sci-fi nerds might get a kick out of it, but unless it's your genre of choice I'd steer clear. If you're looking to hit that 1000 page mark just to say you did, I would go with The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, or another literary classic. You'll get more out of it, you'll enjoy it more, and you won't have to deal with annoying characters.
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