Battlefield Earth

"Terribly Written Books" Supposedly the novel that founded Scientology. Too bad Scientology got off to a bad start -- there couldn't be a worse novel to found your faith on. Unless it's a Terry Goodkind novel...The scary thing is that dude might end up pulling an "L Ron Hubbard" and try starting some creepy Objectivism cult. Ok, Scientology jokes aside, why is Battlefield Earth such dreck? Let's see, aliens manage to easily defeat an entire planet in less than an hour, then brutally enslave the population for over a thousand years. These slaves rise up and defeat these alien overlords using their own technology against them, despite not being trained to use the technology and living just above the level of primitive savages. Somehow, they are still physically fit enough to win this revolution against their alien masters and while they're at it, manage to destroy the technologically advanced alien home planet with just a single nuclear weapon. This sort of broken plot doesn't even merit any more commentary. This is straight-out fantasy masquerading as Sci-Fi. As science fiction novels go, it's a straight-out bad one. Science Fiction without the science in the title. Reading this was like stapling my fingers together -- it bloody well hurt like hell. I can sort of understand why Tom Cruise went crazy on TV -- being forced to read this book would do that to anyone. Treating it like some sort of Bible, well...