Rating: 
Summary: The worse book ever written
Review: After I read this book and before I started to write this review I went and researched the book on the internet. It seems so very unlikely to me that this book would be a "best seller," since it is so very, very, VERY bad. Well, not just "bad," but horrible. It is as if some 16 year old sat down at a typewriter and banged out 1000 pages for a high school assignment, and then turned in the ms without any editing or even a proof read. To say this book is "very bad" is a vast understatement.To begin with, there are huge gaping holes in the plot. Events jump over to other events, as if an entire chapter had been removed and no attempt was made to cover the holes. Then there are the self-contradictions. Distances in the book are reported as one figure on one page, and another figure on a preceeding page. Where is the editor! Then there are the one-dimentional characters. One usually calls such characters "two dimentional," i.e., cardboard cut outs that are so stereotypical as to INSULT the reader, but this book's characters are one-dimentional: no width, depth, or height. A insignificant dot on the literary space-time continuum. This is very, very poor writing. How anyone can rate this book a "good read," let alone a "best seller" is truely astonishing to me. Then there are the other absurdities. Fort Knox is left full of gold even after 1000 years of alien occuption--- even those those aliens are on Earth looking for gold. Fighter jet aircraft built 1000 years ago are still fully functional. The entire military complex of Earth--- 18,000 nuclear bombs; 40,000 attack jet aircraft many with nuclear tips; surface to air missles in the tens of thousands on every point on the globe--- is defeated in just nine minutes. And yet 1000 years later FIVE CAVEMEN leap into ancient aircraft and defeat the alien occupation with no difficulty at all. The writing in this book is horrible. Just HORRIBLE. I could not understand why people say it is a "best seller," so I asked some questions. The the American Book Readers Association were the ones who gave an award for this book as "the best science fiction book writen in the 20th century." That was so unlikel to me (I love science fiction, and I can easily list 100 books far superior to Battlefield Earth) that I researched the American Book Readers Association. It turns out they are a Church of Scientology front group--- they awarded a prize to their own book! The "best seller" claim started to look explained. I then researched the claim that "Battlefield Earth" was "voted number one." Once again, I discovered that the poll was sponsored by the internet on-line site for The Random House, and that Scientologists flooded the site with votes for their own book. It is therefore explained why such a very poorly written book could be considered "best of the century." If you are interested in how to NOT write a book, this is the book for you to study. It is a classic example of bad writing, and could be used in a college writing course as an example of all the mistakes new writers make when writing. Do yourself a favor: buy Asimov instead.
Rating: 
Summary: WOW!
Review: I decided to pick up this book after attending the I-CON XIX sci-fi convention and seeing an ad for the movie coming out this spring. All I can say is that I'm glad I did! This book was an immensely interesting story of the triumph of the human spirit, but more than that, it was a marvelous sci-fi book. Even though over 1000 pages long, I read this book in 7 days, and that includes time spent for school-work and sports! So, anyone who evens thinks about calling themselves a sci-fi enthusiast had better have read this book or they're full of s**t!
Rating: 
Summary: .............. this book is FUN
Review: I read Battlefield Earth on the suggestion of my husband, a big sci-fi fan. Since I'm not a sci-fi fan, I was skeptical. To my surprize, the book is a fun read. No, it's not a piece of intensely deep literature. It's good-versus-evil, space-aliens-versus-earth-men escapest science fiction. Yes, the science in unbelievable. No, the characters aren't thoroughly developed; analyzing characters in this book is a waste of time. For all of this, the book is enjoyable. Generally once I've read a book, I'm not interested in reading it again. This one, I'll read again.
Rating:
Summary: A simple, great old fashioned story
Review: A great story about nothing more than the good guy beating the bad guy. My interest was piqued by the buzz surrounding the movie, so I pickd up this book again a year after my first read. It's just as good the second time around. All of those reviews concerned with the "art", read someone else(Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez), this is just a simple adventure story, let it be you elitist, pretentious, dare I say, people. As for all you paranoid reactionists who have been watching too much dateline(and taking it for news). Forget about scientology. Hubbard made it up to make money, plain and simple(SEE Harlan Ellison, a real artist in the genre, on being there the night Hubbard made up the sucker-bait).
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable, over-long, and shallow
Review: I read this book a couple years ago, and I still remember how bad it was. *My God*. This book should be used as an example of what happens when the author is trying to fill pages rather then minds. The plot is simple: The evil aliens are trying to kill us for no apparent reason, and it is up to the primitive Earth people to fight them off. The characters are so two-dimensional, you would think that if they turned sideways, they would disappear. He might as well have named the protagonist "Mr. Goodguy" -- oh wait, he did. The aliens are senselessly evil for the sake of being evil; the humans are all pure and innocent. The hero is strong, loved by all, and can do no wrong. He learns how to fly jet planes and fight entire alien races in months, where before he was little more then a cave dweller. Even given the balsa-wood plot and characters so shallow they make a mud-puddle look deep, I could forgive this as an example of cheap, feel-good fiction if it wasn't so incredibly loooooooonnnng. More then 1000 pages, for crying out loud! This might work as a comic book or a short story, but at this length, it is but one thing: A waste of paper! Run, do not walk, away from this trash.
Rating: 
Summary: WYSIWYG-What you see is what you get.
Review: This book is exactly what it says it is in the introduction, a 1930-40s style pulp fiction adventure. Those people nostalgic for this style of writing will enjoy this book. I found this book somewhat lenghty and felt it should have been 2 books (the latter half was not quite as well developed as the first half) yet it was still enjoyable none the less. This book is very reminicent of "Flash Gordon" episodes, the serial not the 70s movie. Like many novels from the 40s this book is more fantasy than science fiction. The science in this book has little relation to our current understanding of how the universe works. All in all, a fun, nostalgic read which makes very few demands on the reader.
Rating:
Summary: John Travolta
Review: I just met John Travolta at Border's in Ann Arbor. Cool guy. Excellent book so far having read 43 pages. Powerful. Still 1000 pages to go. But I can tell from the first 43 pages that this is going to be a very adventurous book. I already know that after 43 pages. Not many books can do that. Not many books can give you that sense of thrill after 43 pages, not Grisham's The Firm, not even King's The Shining, and certainly not Pride and Prejudice.
Rating:
Summary: Battlefield Earth
Review: I just finished reading this book and I think that it is one ofthe best science fiction books I have read. In my opinion it topsDune.
Rating:
Summary: A complete adventure tale without equal
Review: Battlefield Earth is a captivating story that is complete with adventure, romance, action, and a clear cut sense of good and evil. It is a story everyone should read, as it is a supreme credit to the wonder of Science Fiction from an author that is a master at gripping the reader and keeping you in the story. Hubbard kept me up late nights reading this book, and kept me coming back for more, page after page. His command of the literary prose could lose those not accustomed to such a wide vocabulary, which would explain the reviews of those who are critical of the book. It seems some have been so confused that they confuse completely different subjects with the book such as Hubbard's non-fiction works. This same mentality would align with those that would criticize Michelangelo's work in sculpture while examining one of his paintings. It makes no sense, and actually comes across as a sort of psychosis. Battlefield Earth is merely a wonderful Science Fiction adventure. Any reader who actually reads this story from beginning to end will enjoy it like none other. Every genre has it's classics, and Battlefield Earth is one that deserves this title alongside such masterpieces as Dune by Herbert, Ringworld by Niven and the many other fantastic authors of Science Fiction like Asimov, Pohl, Pournelle, Heinlein, and more. I really enjoyed this book, and have gone on to read other Science Fiction works by L. Ron Hubbard and have enjoyed them thoroughly. I respect him as a very fine author, and I consider him to be a very talented man in this field. It is worth your time to read this one. You will enjoy it I am certain.
Rating:
Summary: Blech...
Review: It's tripe. Utter, utter tripe. I can't believe the hundreds and hundreds of pages of "stuff" that Hubbard spews out AFTER the "climax" of the story occurs. A violation of the basic laws of literary construction! Did he get paid by the word for this book or what? This was a halfway decent 300 page novel puffed out into a 1000+ plus bloated monstrosity. The Scientology angle is obvious. The name of the alien race sounds AWFUL AWFUL close to "Psyches", which is the term Scientology gives to their mortal enemies, Psychology. C'mon, we're not idiots here. I tried to approach this book with an open mind, despite my feelings regarding the Church of Scientology, and was disappointed to find that this was pretty much a subtle piece of Scientology propeganda. I'm HIGHLY suspect of many of the 5 star reviews I am seeing here. It's a WELL KNOWN fact that Scientology bused their members out to Waldenbooks and other large chains, and had their members buy 6 or 7 copies of Hubbard's books at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if they bus out their members to movie theaters and make them watch the film ad nauseam.
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