Battlefield Earth- Wow, was this book long. It was interesting in parts and boring in others. It was way better than the movie and so different that the cover makes absolutely no sense. It follows post apocolyptic hunter/gatherer Johnny "Good-boy" Tyler as he opposes psychlon oppression. The second half of the book about the intergalactic bank no longer being solvent was especially relavent. Who would have known. This book could have easily been two and probably should have. It is much too long to really enjoy. Toward the end (last 500 pages or so), I was reading it for the sole purpous of finishing it and moving on to something else.
How to Survive a Robot Uprising- This book was more non-fiction than I would have thought. Sure it has some pretty funny lines, but it is very educational on the state of current robotics and technology that will inhabit future robots. Given recent new about man-hunting robots, this book is kinda scary. It isn't a hands down survival guide the way that the Zombie survival guide was, but it was fairly good. It is on the short side, but it was feeling kinda stretched by that point anyways. I would recommend it go on your shelf by The Zombie Survial Guide.
This volume of Sandman didn't disappoint. It was a great story with interesting characters and an interesting concept. It isn't my favorite volume, but it is still very good.
5 comments:
There's been several times I've lingered over "Battlefield Earth" thinking I should read what all the fuss was about -- but the combo of the daunting size and the movies absolute unwatchability has kept me away. I think you've sealed the deal.
I mean if you tear the book in half and read it a half at a time it could work. There are two climaxes in the book. Half way through the second plot starts where the first plot ends. It was a great value for my money though. I paid a buck for the book. All 1300 pages of it.
I actually liked Battlefield Earth (the novel). The movie is atrocious and is NOT representative of the book. Don't let that be the decision making point for you, as even the parts of the book that WERE represented in the movie only gain comprehensibility when reading the book.I agree with Budd that this really was almost two separate novels. The first half is entertaining in an action/adventure/western sort of way, and the second has many more political/cultural/psychological aspects. The first (of three) times I read it, I got hooked on the story up front, but hung around to see what happened all the way through to the end.Hubbard said that when he set out to write the book, he wanted to show that a novel could be of many genres (I think he mentioned westerns, thrillers, and a few others by name) and still be a great story. I think he got a little ambitious and tried to condense too much into one novel, but it still does come out as pretty entertaining, overall.Hubbard's other main series of sci-fi novels, the "Mission Earth" series is actually totally different in feel to BFE. It's a satire of the US thinly veiled as sci-fi, where a race of aliens who send a secret agent (of their CIA) to Earth to start the process of preventing the Earth from self-destructing in pollution and war so that they can conquer the planet in about 100 years. There are plots within plots and jabs at figures from history (including the Rockerfellers and others in positions of power). It's 10 books! long, but I read it back in college and felt like I blew through them in one sitting. Worth checking out at the library to see if it interests you...
I didn't mean to imply that I didn't like the book. I enjoyed it. It was a fun read and I love how humanity was portrayed. It did bog down in a few places and I found myself wanting it to pick back up.
Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly...
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