But there is more to this: science fiction, particularly in its Golden Age, had a mission. I cannot, of course, speak for my friends of that period. But from Campbell and from “shooting the breeze” with other writers of the time, one got the very solid impression that they were doing a heavy job of beating the drum to get man to the stars.
At the beginning of that time, science fiction was regarded as a sort of awful stepchild in the world of literature. But worse than that, science itself was not getting the attention or the grants or the government expenditures it should have received. There has to be a lot of public interest and demand before politicians shell out the financing necessary to get a subject whizzing.
Campbell’s crew of writers were pretty stellar. They included very top-line names. They improved the literary quality of the genre. And they began the boom of its broader popularity.
A year or so after The Golden Age began, I recall going into a major university’s science department. I wanted some data on cytology for my own serious researches. I was given a courteous reception and was being given the references when I noticed that the room had been gradually filling up. And not with students but with professors and deans. It had been whispered around the offices who was in the biology department, and the next thing I knew, I was shaking a lot of hands held out below beaming faces. And what did they want to know: What did I think of this story or that? And had I seen this or that writer lately? And how was Campbell?
They had a literature! Science fiction!
And they were proud of it!
For a while, before and after World War II, I was in rather steady association with the new era of scientists, the boys who built the bomb, who were beginning to get the feel of rockets. They were all science fiction buffs. And many of the hottest scientists around were also writing science fiction on the side.
In 1945 I attended a meeting of old scientist and science fiction friends. The meeting was at the home of my dear friend, the incomparable Bob Heinlein. And do you know what was their agenda? How to get man into space fast enough so that he would be distracted from further wars on Earth. And they were the lads who had the government ear and authority to do it! We are coming close to doing it. The scientists got man into space and they even had the Russians cooperating for a while.
One can’t go on living a naive life believing that everything happens by accident, that events simply follow events, that there is a natural order of things and that everything will come out right somehow. That isn’t science. That’s fate, kismet, and we’re back in the world of fantasy. No, things do get planned. The Golden Age of science fiction that began with Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction gathered enough public interest and readership to help push man into space. Today, you hear top scientists talking the way we used to talk in bull sessions so long ago.
Campbell did what he set out to do. So long as he had his first wife and others around him to remind him that science was for people, that it was no use to just send machines out for the sake of machines, that there was no point in going into space unless the mission had something to do with people, too, he kept winning. For he was a very brilliant man and a great and very patient editor. After he lost his first wife, Doña, in 1949—she married George O. Smith—and after he no longer had a sounding board who made him keep people in stories, and when he no longer had his old original writing crew around, he let his magazine slip back, and when it finally became named Analog, his reign was over. But The Golden Age had kicked it all into high gear. So Campbell won after all.
When I started out to write this novel, I wanted to write pure science fiction. And not in the old tradition. Writing forms and styles have changed, so I had to bring myself up to date and modernize the styles and patterns. To show that science fiction is not science fiction because of a particular kind of plot, this novel contains practically every type of story there is—detective, spy, adventure, western, love, air war, you name it. All except fantasy; there is none of that. The term “science” also includes economics and sociology and medicine where these are related to material things. So they’re in here, too.
In writing for magazines, the editors (because of magazine format) force one to write to exact lengths. I was always able to do that—it is a kind of knack. But this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she rolled, so long as the pace kept up. So I may have wound up writing the biggest sf novel ever in terms of length. The experts—and there are lots of them to do so—can verify whether this is so.
Some of my readers may wonder that I did not include my own serious subjects in this book. It was with no thought of dismissal of them. It was just that I put on my professional writer’s hat. I also did not want to give anybody the idea I was doing a press relations job for my other serious works.
There are those who will look at this book and say, “See? We told you he is just a science fiction writer!” Well, as one of the crew of writers that helped start man to the stars, I’m very proud of also being known as a science fiction writer. You have satellites out there, man has walked on the moon, you have probes going to the planets, don’t you? Somebody had to dream the dream, and a lot of somebodies like those great writers of The Golden Age and later had to get an awful lot of people interested in it to make it true.
I hope you enjoy this novel. It is the only one I ever wrote just to amuse myself. It also celebrates my golden wedding with the muse. Fifty years a professional—1930–1980.
And as an old pro I assure you that it is pure science fiction. No fantasy. Right on the rails of the genre. Science is for people. And so is science fiction.
Ready?
Stand by.
Blast off!
L. Ron Hubbard
October 1980
Battlefield Earth
Part 1
1
“Man,” said Terl, “is an endangered species.”
The hairy paws of the Chamco brothers hung suspended above the broad keys of the laser-bash game. The cliffs of Char’s eyebones drew down over his yellow orbs as he looked up in mystery. Even the steward, who had been padding quietly about picking up her saucepans, lumbered to a halt and stared.
Terl could not have produced a more profound effect had he thrown a meat-girl naked into the middle of the room.
The clear dome of the Intergalactic Mining Company employee recreation hall shone black around and above them, silvered at its crossbars by the pale glow of the Earth’s single moon, half-full on this late summer night.
Terl lifted his large amber eyes from the tome that rested minutely in his massive claws and looked around the room. He was suddenly aware of the effect he had produced, and it amused him. Anything to relieve the humdrum monotony of a ten-year† duty tour in this gods-abandoned mining camp, way out here on the edge of a minor galaxy.
________
†Time, distance and weight have been translated in all cases throughout this book to old Earth time, distance and weight systems for the sake of uniformity and to prevent confusion in the various systems employed by the Psychlos. —Translator
In an even more professorial voice, already deep and roaring enough, Terl repeated his thought. “Man is an endangered species.”
Char glowered at him. “What in the name of diseased crap are you reading?”
Terl did not much care for his tone. After all, Char was simply one of several mine managers, but Terl was chief of minesite security. “I didn’t read it. I thought it.”
“You must’ve got it from somewhere,” growled Char. “What is that book?”
Terl held it up so Char could see its back. It said, General Report of Geological Minesites, Volume 250,369. Like all such books, it was huge but printed on material that made it almost weightless, particularly on a low-gravity planet such as Earth, a triumph of design and manufacture that did not cut heavily into the payloads of freighters.
“Rughr,” growled Char in disgust. “That must be two, three hundred Earth-years old.
If you want to prowl around in books, I got an up-to-date general board of directors’ report that says we’re thirty-five freighters behind in bauxite deliveries.”
The Chamco brothers looked at each other and then at their game to see where they had gotten to in shooting down the live mayflies in the air box. But Terl’s next words distracted them again.
“Today,” said Terl, brushing Char’s push for work aside, “I got a sighting report from a recon drone that recorded only thirty-five men in that valley near that peak.” Terl waved his paw westward toward the towering mountain range silhouetted by the moon.
“So?” said Char.
“So I dug up the books out of curiosity. There used to be hundreds in that valley. And furthermore,” continued Terl with his professorial ways coming back, “there used to be thousands and thousands of them on this planet.”
“You can’t believe all you read,” said Char heavily. “On my last duty tour—it was Arcturus IV—”
“This book,” said Terl, lifting it impressively, “was compiled by the culture and ethnology department of the Intergalactic Mining Company.”
The larger Chamco brother batted his eyebones. “I didn’t know we had one.”
Char sniffed. “It was disbanded more than a century ago. Useless waste of money. Yapping around about ecological impacts and junk like that.” He shifted his bulk around to Terl. “Is this some kind of scheme to explain a nonscheduled vacation? You’re going to get your butt in a bind. I can see it, a pile of requisitions this high for breathe-gas tanks and scoutcraft. You won’t get any of my workers.”
“Turn off the juice,” said Terl. “I only said that man—”
“I know what you said. But you got your appointment because you are clever. That’s right, clever. Not intelligent. Clever. And I can see right through an excuse to go on a hunting expedition. What Psychlo in his right skull would bother with the things?”
The smaller Chamco brother grinned. “I get tired of just dig-dig-dig, ship-ship-ship. Hunting might be fun. I didn’t think anybody did it for—”
Char turned on him like a tank zeroing in on its prey. “Fun hunting those things! You ever see one?” He lurched to his feet and the floor creaked. He put his paw just above his belt. “They only come up to here! They got hardly any hair on them except their heads. They’re a dirty white color like a slug. They’re so brittle they break up when you try to put them in a pouch.” He snarled in disgust and picked up a saucepan of kerbango. “They’re so weak they couldn’t pick this up without straining their guts. And they’re not good eating.” He tossed off the kerbango and made an earthquake shudder.
“You ever see one?” said the bigger Chamco brother.
Char sat down, the dome rumbled, and he handed the empty saucepan to the steward. “No,” he said. “Not alive. I seen some bones in the shafts and I heard.”
“There were thousands of them once,” said Terl, ignoring the mine manager. “Thousands! All over the place.”
Char belched. “Shouldn’t wonder they die off. They breathe this oxygen-nitrogen air. Deadly stuff.”
“I got a crack in my face mask yesterday,” said the smaller Chamco brother. “For about thirty seconds I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Bright lights bursting inside your skull. Deadly stuff. I really look forward to getting back home where you can walk around without a suit or mask, where the gravity gives you something to push against, where everything is a beautiful purple and there’s not one bit of this green stuff. My papa used to tell me that if I wasn’t a good Psychlo and if I didn’t say sir-sir-sir to the right people, I’d wind up at a butt end of nowhere like this. He was right. I did. It’s your shot, Brother.”
Char sat back and eyed Terl. “You ain’t really going hunting for a man, are you?”
Terl looked at his book. He inserted one of his talons to keep his place and then thumped the volume against his knee.
“I think you’re wrong,” he mused. “There was something to these creatures. Before we came along, it says here, they had towns on every continent. They had flying machines and boats. They even appear to have fired off stuff into space.”
“How do you know that wasn’t some other race?” said Char. “How do you know it wasn’t some lost colony of Psychlos?”
“No, it wasn’t that,” said Terl. “Psychlos can’t breathe this air. It was man all right, just like the cultural guys researched. And right in our own histories, you know how it says we got here?”
“Ump,” said Char.
“Man apparently sent out some kind of probe that gave full directions to the place, had pictures of man on it and everything. It got picked up by a Psychlo recon. And you know what?”
“Ump,” said Char.
“The probe and the pictures were on a metal that was rare everywhere and worth a clanking fortune. And Intergalactic paid the Psychlo governors sixty trillion Galactic credits for the directions and the concession. One gas barrage and we were in business.”
“Fairy tales, fairy tales,” said Char. “Every planet I ever helped gut has some butt and crap story like that. Every one.” He yawned his face into a huge cavern. “All that was hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. You ever notice that the public relations department always puts their fairy tales so far back nobody can ever check them?”
“I’m going to go out and catch one of these things,” said Terl.
“Not with any of my crews or equipment you ain’t,” said Char.
Terl heaved his mammoth bulk off the seat and crossed the creaking floor to the berthing hatch.
“You’re as crazy as a nebula of crap,” said Char.
The two Chamco brothers got back into their game and intently laser-blasted the entrapped mayflies into smoky puffs, one by one.
Char looked at the empty door. The security chief knew no Psychlo could go up into those mountains. Terl really was crazy. There was deadly uranium up there.
But Terl, rumbling along a hallway to his room, did not consider himself crazy. He was being very clever as always. He had started the rumors so no questions would get out of hand when he began to put into motion the personal plans that would make him wealthy and powerful and, almost as important, dig him out of this accursed planet.
The man-things were the perfect answer. All he needed was just one and then he could get the others. His campaign had begun and begun very well, he thought.
He went to sleep gloating over how clever he was.
2
It was a good day for a funeral, only it seemed there wasn’t going to be one.
Dark, stormy-looking clouds were creeping in from the west, shredded by the snow-speckled peaks, leaving only a few patches of blue sky showing.
Jonnie Goodboy Tyler stood beside his horse at the upper end of the wide mountain meadow and looked with discontent upon the sprawled and decaying village.
His father was dead and he ought to be properly buried. He hadn’t died of the red blotches and there was no question of somebody else catching it. His bones had just crumbled away. So there was no excuse not to properly bury him. Yet there was no sign of anyone doing so.
Jonnie had gotten up in the dawn dark, determined to choke down his grief and go about his correct business. He had yelled up Windsplitter, the fastest of his several horses, put a cowhide rope on his nose, and gone down through the dangerous defiles to the lower plain, and with a lot of hard riding and herding, pushed five wild cattle back up to the mountain meadow. He had then bashed out the brains of the fattest of them and ordered his Aunt Ellen to push the barbecue fire together and get meat cooking.
Aunt Ellen hadn’t cared for the orders. She had broken her sharpest rock, she said, and couldn’t skin and cut the meat, and certain men hadn’t dragged in any firewood lately.
Jonnie Goodboy had stood very tall and looked at her. Among people who were average height, Jonnie Goodboy stood half a head taller, a muscular six feet shining with the bronzed health of his twenty years. He had just stood there, w
ind tangling his corn-yellow hair and beard, looking at her with his ice-blue eyes. And Aunt Ellen had gone and found some wood and had put a stone to work, even though it was a very dull one. He could see her now, down there below him, wrapped in the smoke of slow-roasting meat, busy.
There ought to be more activity in the village, Jonnie thought. The last big funeral he had seen was when he was about five years old, when Smith the mayor had died. There had been songs and preaching and a feast and it had ended with a dance by moonlight. Mayor Smith had been put in a hole in the ground and the dirt filled in over him, and while the two cross-sticks of the marker were long since gone, it had been a proper respectful funeral. More recently they had just dumped the dead in the black-rock gulch below the waterpool and let the coyotes clean them up.
Well, that wasn’t the way you went about it, Jonnie told himself. Not with his father, anyway.
He spun on his heel and with one motion went aboard Windsplitter. The thump of his hard bare heel sent the horse down toward the courthouse.
He passed by the decayed ruins of cabins on the outskirts. Every year they caved in further. For a long time anybody needing a building log hadn’t cut any trees: they had just stripped handy existing structures. But the logs in these cabins were so eaten up and rotted now, they hardly even served as firewood.
Windsplitter picked his way down the weed-grown track, walking watchfully to avoid stepping on ancient and newly discarded food bones and trash. He twitched his ear toward a distant wolf howl from up in a mountain glen.
The smell of new blood and the meat smoke must be pulling the wolves down, thought Jonnie, and he hefted his kill-club from where it dangled by a thong into his palm. He’d lately seen a wolf right down in the cabins, prowling around for bones, or maybe even a puppy or a child. Even a decade ago it wouldn’t have happened. But every year there were fewer and fewer people.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 2
