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Battlefield Earth (novel)

Battlefield Earth
Battlefield earth book cover.jpg
First edition
Author L. Ron Hubbard
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction
Publisher St. Martin's Press
Publication date
1982
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 1050 (paperback)
ISBN

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 1982 science fiction novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. He also composed a soundtrack to the book called Space Jazz.

In the year AD 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos, for a millennium. The Psychlos were inadvertently led to Earth by one of NASA's deep space satellites. After one thousand years, humanity is an endangered species numbering fewer than 50,000, and reduced to a few tribes in isolated parts of the world, while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young warrior of one such tribe, lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Depressed by the death and disease affecting his tribe, due to irradiation by decaying unused nuclear land mines (see Medium Atomic Demolition Munition), he leaves his village to explore the lowlands and to disprove the superstitions long held by his people of monsters in those areas. He is captured in the ruins of Denver by Terl, the Psychlo chief of planetary security.

The Psychlos, hairy 9-foot (2.7 m) tall, 1,000-pound sociopaths, originate from a planet (Planet Psychlo) with an atmosphere very different from that of Earth, with a slightly different table of elements. Their "breathe-gas" explodes on contact with even trace amounts of radioactive metals, such as uranium. The Psychlos have been the dominant species across multiple universes for 100,000 years. It becomes apparent in the later chapters that the Psychlos were originally nonviolent miners but were subjugated by a ruling class to become warlike.

Terl has been assigned to Earth, and his term has been arbitrarily extended by the Planetary Head of the mining operations named Numph. Fearful at the thought of spending several more years on Earth, Terl decides to make himself a millionaire to escape, by secretly mining a lode of gold in the Rocky Mountains. It is surrounded by uranium deposits that make Psychlo mining impossible, so Terl captures Jonnie to mine the gold for him.

After a time, Terl captures Jonnie's childhood love Chrissie and her sister, Jenny, and holds them hostage to ensure Jonnie's continued cooperation. Thereafter, Jonnie is free to move around the mining area. Terl even forces Jonnie to submit to a learning machine that teaches him numerous subjects, including the Psychlo language. Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland and recruit 83 Scottish youths (including several deliberately selected body doubles for Jonnie), old women, a doctor, and a historian to help with the mining. Jonnie persuades the Scots to help him against the Psychlo rule on Earth. Terl does not understand English, and is instead convinced that the Scots are motivated by a promise of pay on project completion.


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