Re: Sci Fi

In article <3pehfl$l0j@crl.crl.com> milne@crl.com (Andrew Milne) writes:

Grady Ward (grady@netcom.com) wrote:
: Andrew Milne (milne@crl.com) wrote:
: : In addition to his writings on Dianetics and Scientology,
: : Mr. Hubbard was a renowned and popular writer in a variety of
: : genres. He was one of the architects of the Golden Age of Science
: : Fiction; however, he was
: One of the ditch-diggers of the Golden Age maybe; an Asimov,
: L. Sprague De Camp, or Heinlein he was not. "But sf was clearly not
: LRH's forte, and most of his work in the genre reads as tendentious or
: laboured or both." (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Clute/Nichols
: St. Martins 1993)

: : Every volume of the Mission Earth series was a bestseller. So was
: : Battlefield Earth. And here are some critics' comments about L. Ron

: Bestsellers because criminal cultists bought the books to inflate the
: sales. Popular? No.
You ass, Ward. Stephen King isn't a Scientologist. Neither is Heinlein.
Neither is Asimov. All admired LRH's fiction writing.

I challenge you to provide _any_ independantly verifiable source that proves the above statement. I had the missfortune to read some of "Battle- Field Earth" at one stage (look, it was a friends copy, OK?) and in my opinion it was shite.

It wasn't bad, ooh noo, it was right the way out of the other side of bad, through appalling and all the way to pure unadulterated shite. A book so devoid of any kind of redeeming virtue, that it put me off reading any Science Fiction altogether for quite a while (in fact it put me off reading anything but the back of cereal boxes). It was so bad it wasn't even funny.

Granny: "I do so like to spoil the children..."

Me: "You could try feeding them into a combine harvester, or if that doesn't spoil them sufficiently, give them an L Ron Hubbard book."

It seems he's still writing them too, even though he's dead. Clever that, eh?

Yours with some literary taste and discrimination,

- Matt. -- _______________________________________________________________________

Matthew Bassett internet mail: matthew@te.rl.ac.uk D.R.A.L. janet mail: matthew@uk.ac.rl.te