this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
112 points (94.4% liked)

Asklemmy

43989 readers
727 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I don't know if this counts, but when I was about 13I was very excited to find an enormous book in my favorite genre at the time, Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.

It was the first book I ever put down in disgust without finishing. In the almost half-century since then, there are under a dozen that I haven't finished. Shows you just how bad it is.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I read all of Mission Earth. All 12(?) volumes. I couldn't possibly say why - I hated it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would love to hear more about this. Those books are SO long

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Well, I think I figured out by book nine that it was never going to get any better, but by that point there were only three books to go and they weren't exactly difficult reads. Maybe I was hate-reading. "Will you continue failing to meet my expectations L. Ron Hubbard, you miserable cunt? I bet you will."

And I have a tendency to think that any satire is brilliant and biting and I'm just not worldly enough to get it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

As a young teen scifi nerd I enjoyed the world, and tech he built in that book. I read the 600+ pages pretty quick. I think I was too young to critique it as a literary work.
The movie was absolute garbage.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I tried reading his "Mission Earth" series. I did not finish the series; I managed about two and a half books before I realized that I wasn't obligated to finish it just because I'd started.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh man, I really enjoyed Battlefield Earth. And the movie. What turned you off?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Even as a 13-year-old, I could see gaping holes in the plot and inconsistencies. The aliens were hardly alien.

Even more so, I could see that the writing was clumsy and the dialogue was stilted. I could see how the writer was developing the story, and so I was not pulled into it at all. I was actually thinking to myself that I could write something like this. And I was 13!

I haven't seen the movie, but from the sounds of it many of the problems with the book are also on screen.