: Battlefield Earth
Very entertaining, though 400 pages too long. Hubbard seems too full of himself to see the preposterousness of his premise (like library books and nuclear bombs would survive 1,000 years of decay). Still, it’s all good fun as long as you don’t take it seriously. Very much a pulp novel. Hubbard is obviously good at plotting (he’s just not much of scifi writer). I was especially impressed with the way he tied all the loose ends together via the characters’ psychology. In other words, the plot came from the characters, not from an arbitrary need to force the action in a certain direction. Example: the evil alien, Terl, is a conniving schemer who’s own paranoia and distrust for his fellow aliens help cause his downfall. So even though some things seemed to work out ideally for the humans, it wasn’t a coincidence — it was caused by the greed and hubris of the aliens.
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