exploding
David Shapshak
For once, you couldn’t really say that the film betrays a great novel. L Ron Hubbards’s novel Battlefield Earth is an epic mostly because it’s 1E064 pages long, not because it’s one of the great science- fiction novels of the genre.
Hubbard is not the Tolkien or Asimov of his field and – no matter what John Travolta says – Battlefield Earth, the Scientology founder’s book, is not “one of the greatest books of the [20th] century”. Clearly, the comeback kid actor doesn’t read much.
But, although it is not a great novel, it’s a good read and has become a kind of classic in science-fiction circles in much the same way that FW de Klerk’s autobiography hasn’t.
Battlefield Earth has all the classic sci-fi components: an against-the-odds tale of how an oppressed patriot frees his people from tyranny, skilfully utilising a forgotten civilisation’s rusty technology and rediscovering the characters’ innate humanity.
It’s also more believable than the screen version. This is mostly because the timescale of the story is years instead of the film’s weeks (learning to fly a Harrier jump jet takes several years not seven days). It give the author time to elaborate on how humanity can save itself from an oppressive “other” – the evil Psychlos who have invaded Earth and are mining its mineral wealth, but are humanity’s worst aspects distilled into 3m giants.
Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is Hubbard’s ideal hero, a golden-haired, strong-willed, all- American good guy with heart. When captured by the evil Terl – the largest, meanest alien of them all – he bides his time and learns all he can about the Psychlos while Terl trains him to mine gold in his native Rocky Mountains.
The crucial point the film fails to make is that the Psychlos breathe the unimaginatively named Breath Gas, which explodes near any kind of radiation.
Terl is stuck on our backwater planet and intends to make himself rich (there’s no superior’s daughter that has forced his exclusion in the novel) by mining the gold and uses the human “man-animals” for his plot. He intends to destroy what’s left of man when he’s finished.
Hubbard’s tale is laden with clear-ly discernible symbolism and analogy: it’s the radiation of the nuclear weapons left behind by the Americans and the Russians that becomes humanity’s ultimate saving grace.
What’s more, through education Jonnie can defeat evil, while he integrates what’s left of humanity into a united force to depose the evil Psychlos.
But Hubbard’s actual writing style is pedantic to say the least. He lacks much writing skill and clearly traded on his Scientology fame to get this to the publishers.
Throughout the book, he belabours the point so repeatedly and excessively that you suspect his target audience needed constant reminding of a rather simplistic plot. Having never read any of the Scientology stuff I couldn’t say if this is his religious style, although you can’t help but wonder.
Despite Hubbard’s attempt to write “pure science fiction,” in a foreword in which he claims to have been one of the grand original sci-fi writers, it is pure escapism. While there is some reward for a willing suspension of disbelief when reading the novel, the elaborate story and detailed mythology Hubbard creates for Earth in the year 3000 and the Psychlos are lost in Travolta’s film.
Then again, the battle for Earth is all over by page 438. The rest of the novel (626 pages) is about how Jonnie tames the rest of the universe, becomes perhaps the most powerful person in all of history, has his face on the new galactic currency, and settles down with his lifelong love in what used to be Luxembourg.
Maybe for once, the film version cuts to the chase, revealing in the process that there isn’t much to pursue.