I read an article yesterday about my old friend Madden the Clown and Roddie Doyle attending the opening of a new Church of Scientology building in Essendon. Apparently, Madden is quoted as saying: ''You have set the standard for the community with your restoration of this building and with your social programs - an example for others to follow''.
He's such a character!
But I loved this quote further down:
I'd always seen his books around (I had even accepted free entry to the "L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition" in Hollywood once when backpacking and thus very poor), and so when the opportunity arose to borrow Battlefield Earth from the library, I took it.
For those of you who don't know it (a) good on you, and (b) it's about an alien race that enslaves humanity in year 3000, and the fight against them (particularly by the "hero" - Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Yes, that's the name he went with).
I was predictably shocked and stunned by what I read.
At the sheer badness of it.
For one thing, the language he uses is laughable. The bad guys, called "Psychlos", eat “goo-food”, breathe “breathe-gas”, and drink “kerbango”.
Points for imagination: zero.
Another example of extraordinary writing can be found right at the beginning, on page 4, when one of the Psychlos insults another saying ”You’re as crazy as a nebula of crap.”
Can I remind everyone that this was written AFTER Star Wars had come out?
The following paragraph from page 414 was so terrible, I just had to write it down - it's word for word, no typos:
It even gets some shameless self-congratulatory delusion in there, stating towards the end that after the humans won, one of the characters “wrote a book: The Jonnie Goodboy Tyler I knew, or The Conqueror of Psychlo, Pride of the Scottish Nation. It was not as good as this book, for it was intended for semiliterate people” (page 1049 - yes, that's one THOUSAND and forty nine pages of this!)
In fact, it appears El Ronnie was particularly adept at the self-congratulation. According to his bio (in the book, though I should point out there's a possibility it's not factually correct...or worse) he was "in addition to a writer (with a career spanning more than half a century of intense literary achievement and creative influence), an explorer, ethnologist, mariner and pilot, filmmaker and photographer, philosopher and educator, composer and musician. He broke his first bronc and became the blood brother of a Blackfeet Indian medicine man by age six. In 1927, when he was 16, he traveled to a still remote Asia…"
Ahhhh! I can't do this any more, so I'll just let him finish off, with his preface to the so-called "book":
He's such a character!
But I loved this quote further down:
"The church was founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who declared that the galactic dictator Xenu dumped millions of corpses in volcanoes on Earth 75 million years ago and blew them up with 17 hydrogen bombs. The souls, or ''thetans'', of the dead were contaminated and in turn contaminated humans, who can be cleansed only by Scientology."It reminded me of a ranty book review I'd started a while ago after reading the hilarious-for-all-wrong-reasons Battlefield Earth a while ago. I actually read it for scientific purposes - to see whether this Lafayette Ronald Hubbard guy was for real, or more like a misunderstood Sacha Baron Cohen creation, like Borat. Y'know - just saying lots of crazy shit and seeing if anyone picked up that he was joking.
I'd always seen his books around (I had even accepted free entry to the "L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition" in Hollywood once when backpacking and thus very poor), and so when the opportunity arose to borrow Battlefield Earth from the library, I took it.
For those of you who don't know it (a) good on you, and (b) it's about an alien race that enslaves humanity in year 3000, and the fight against them (particularly by the "hero" - Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Yes, that's the name he went with).
I was predictably shocked and stunned by what I read.
At the sheer badness of it.
For one thing, the language he uses is laughable. The bad guys, called "Psychlos", eat “goo-food”, breathe “breathe-gas”, and drink “kerbango”.
Points for imagination: zero.
Another example of extraordinary writing can be found right at the beginning, on page 4, when one of the Psychlos insults another saying ”You’re as crazy as a nebula of crap.”
Can I remind everyone that this was written AFTER Star Wars had come out?
The following paragraph from page 414 was so terrible, I just had to write it down - it's word for word, no typos:
“Chrissie had been spotted by the Scots, and the news earlier rumored to that effect was now confirmed as she went about helping the parson collect wounded Scots on a flatbed that had been gotten running.”And of course, it contains the propaganda. The following describes a doctor operating on a Psychlo brain:
“MacKendrick saw their reaction. “Nothing new in this. Just electrical impulses approximating brain commands. Some man-scientist did this maybe thirteen hundred years ago and thought he’d found the secret of all thought and made up a cult about it called ‘psychology’. Forgotten now. It wasn’t the secret of thought; it was just the mechanics of bodies. They started with frogs. I’m cataloging this body’s communication channels, that’s all.””Relevance? Zero.
It even gets some shameless self-congratulatory delusion in there, stating towards the end that after the humans won, one of the characters “wrote a book: The Jonnie Goodboy Tyler I knew, or The Conqueror of Psychlo, Pride of the Scottish Nation. It was not as good as this book, for it was intended for semiliterate people” (page 1049 - yes, that's one THOUSAND and forty nine pages of this!)
In fact, it appears El Ronnie was particularly adept at the self-congratulation. According to his bio (in the book, though I should point out there's a possibility it's not factually correct...or worse) he was "in addition to a writer (with a career spanning more than half a century of intense literary achievement and creative influence), an explorer, ethnologist, mariner and pilot, filmmaker and photographer, philosopher and educator, composer and musician. He broke his first bronc and became the blood brother of a Blackfeet Indian medicine man by age six. In 1927, when he was 16, he traveled to a still remote Asia…"
Ahhhh! I can't do this any more, so I'll just let him finish off, with his preface to the so-called "book":
“To show that science fiction is not science fiction because of a particular kind of plot, this novel contains practically every type of story there is – detective, spy, adventure, western, love, air war, you name it. All except fantasy; there is none of that. The term “science” also includes economics and sociology and medicine where these are related to material things. So they’re in here, too.And now you want to read it.
“In writing for magazines, the editors (because of magazine format) force one to write to exact lengths. I was always able to do that – it is kind of a knack. But this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she rolled, so long as the pace kept up. So I may have wound up writing the biggest sf novel ever in terms of length. The experts – and there are lots of them to do so – can verify whether this is so…
“And as an old pro I assure that it is pure science fiction. No fantasy. Right on the rails of the genre. Science is for people. And so is science fiction.”
“Ready?
“Stand by.
“Blast off!”
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