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{{quote|''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?"''|''[[Battlefield Earth]]'', Part 1, Chapter 1}}
''[[Battlefield Earth]]: A Saga of the Year 3000'' is a 1980 science fiction novel written by [[L. Ron Hubbard]] about Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, one of the last humans left on Earth after an [[Alien Invasion]] by the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|sadistic, corporate]] Psychlos. After growing frustrated with life in his miserable mountain village, Jonnie strikes on his own only to be captured by Terl, a "[[Villain Ball|clever, not intelligent]]" Psychlo with a scheme to get rich by having human slaves mine gold for him. Jonnie is taught the Psychlos' language and masters the aliens' technology, but when the time comes to capture more workers he convinces them to help overthrow the aliens and liberate the planet. With the aid of this band of [[Violent Glaswegian|warrior Scots]], Jonnie leads a daring attack that simultaneously strikes at the Psychlo homeworld even as it crushes the alien occupiers.
That's the first third or so of the book. After that Jonnie has to deal with Psychlo POWs, a bitter political rival allied with Terl and a [[Those Wacky Nazis|neo-neo-Nazi]], other extraterrestrial forces eager to swoop in on a vulnerable Earth, and alien debt collectors trying to repossess the planet, all while cracking the secrets of Psychlo mathematics.
''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' made it to the top of numerous bestseller lists,<ref>Scientologists bought it in bulk in an effort to boost sales of ''Dianetics''</ref>
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Affectionate Parody]]: Would probably be seen as one, had [[Harry Harrison|anybody]] [[Robert A. Heinlein|else]] written it. Hubbard's publishers responded to criticism with such claims, which sounds like a [[Parody Retcon]].
* [[After the End]]: Mankind's cities are in ruins, and there are only scattered bands of humanity left.
* [[AFGNCAAP]]: Jonny becomes something close - after he's liberated Earth, annihilated the Psychlos, and shown the other aliens the path to righteousness by abandoning wartime economies for blissful consumerism, he becomes the greatest hero in existence. When other alien races depict him in their art, his features are changed to resemble their own, so that eventually no one is able to agree on what this god among mortals actually looked like. Since Jonnie is of course modest enough to want a simple frontier life, he is fine with this. ▼
* [[Alien Arts Are Appreciated]]: The Psychlos create no art nor do they have a sense of aesthetics, but they ''do'' appreciate others' art in the most commercial sense - they kept the Chinkos around partially to sell off their paintings. Played straight later when other alien diplomats pay good spacebucks for a Chinese family's paintings and knickknacks.
* [[Alien Invasion]]: Once by the Psychlos in the backstory, while over the course of the book the heroes have to deal with a host of ''other'' alien races having a go at Earth.
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* [[Alternative Number System]]: The Psychlos use a base-11 system.
* [[Alternate Universe]]: Psychlo is in another universe where natural laws are slightly different from ours. That alone meant the book made a little more sense than the film.
* [[
* [[Author Appeal]]: You get the sense this was L. Ron's attempt to write an ''[[Animal Farm]]'' exposing the imminent dangers of psychology.
* [[Author Avatar]]: The earliest covers portrayed [[Marty Stu|Jonny Goodboy Tyler]] as having a close physical resemblance to none other than L. Ron Hubbard himself. Later editions have Jonnie more closely resembling Barry Bostwick in the film ''Megaforce'', with just a hint of [[Chuck Norris]].
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* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: The Psychlo are famous for the "breathe-gas" they respire and its explosive reaction to radiation, but that's only the start. They don't have lips or eyelids, but "mouthbones" and "eyebones." The top half of their skull is mostly bone, leaving their brains squished down against their spinal column, and their hearts aren't behind their ribcage, but down towards their belt buckles. Also, [[You Fail Biology Forever|they're viruses]]
* [[Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word]]: Terl spends at least two whole sections of the book coming up with "leverage" over his coworkers.
* [[Braids, Beads, and Buckskins]]: The everyday clothing of Jonnie and his tribe, though it's especially prevalent in the movie version.
* [[Card-Carrying Villain]]: Terl at one point thanks "the evil gods," the sole mention of Psychlo theology. Meanwhile, the Tolneps are so eager to let you know that they are eeeevil slavers that they'll [[Fridge Logic|cut into their profit margins]] by using the bones of hundreds of thousands of slaves to make a clock.
* [[Childhood Marriage Promise]]: Little Bittie gets Little Pattie a locket with "To my future wife" inscribed on it.
* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: Terl in particular and the Psychlos in general, to the point that you may wonder how their society functions at all.
* [[City in
* [[Concept Album]]: L. Ron Hubbard composed a companion music album called ''[
* [[Cool Horse]]: Windsplitter, Jonnie's faithful steed. He even gets a Psychlo kill or two!
* [[Covers Always Lie]]: A blurb from [[Robert A. Heinlein]] promises "A terrific story," while the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' assures us "The pace starts fast and never lets up" and the ''Kirkus Review'' insists we're in for "Tight plotting, furious action and have at 'em entertainment."
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* [[Depleted Phlebotinum Shells]]: The humans lace their ammunition with radioactive material, since the "breathe-gas" Psychlos use for air ''explodes'' if it encounters so much as a "[[Did Not Do the Research|single isotope]]" of uranium.
* [[Depopulation Bomb]]: In the backstory, a single Psychlo gas drone was able to wipe out most of humanity. Terl's back-up plan involves getting the same gas drone to finish the job.
* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: [[
* [[Deus Ex Nukina]]: When your enemy has a ridiculous vulnerability to radiation, what else are you gonna try to sneak onto their home planet?
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: Science-fiction with an emphasis on ''fiction''. Even then, the fiction makes it hard to suspend disbelief.
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* [[Explosive Leash]]: Not on Jonnie or the other workers, but for the hostages, Chrissie and Pattie.
* [[Failed a Spot Check]]: When Terl was loading up the coffins he thought were filled with gold, he didn't notice the dangling fuses to the nukes the humans had stuck inside them. In a later, similar event Terl never notices that the "gold-filled" coffins he's loading have the suspicious lightness of straw.
▲* [[
* [[Final Speech]]: {{spoiler|Bittie is able to linger on despite being almost bisected by machinegun fire, while Jonnie spends time cutting down Brigantes by the score, just so he can give his hero some anguished last words}}.
* [[Good All Along]]: {{spoiler|Turns out if you remove a Psychlos' [[Mind Control]] implants, they can be pretty amiable. Unfortunately, Jonnie only figures out how to do this ''after'' exterminating the majority of the race and dooming the sterilized survivors to extinction}}.
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* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: The Brigantes, [[Cannibal Clan|a mongrel tribe]] of former mercenaries sent to Africa [[Just Before the End]], have an innovative approach to food shortages, paychecks, and burials.
* [[Inferred Holocaust]]: Some of the Psychlo bases on other worlds were in the middle of occupied cities. When Jonnie checks on them a year or so after his attack on the Psychlo Empire, he finds blasted, lifeless ruins, [[Moral Dissonance|but thinks no more of it]].
* [[Informed Ability]]: The Psychlos are sadistic monsters who torture victims to death over days for the simple joy of it! ...Allegedly. There's a single example off-screen, but not even Terl has to tear someone apart to sate his bloodlust. Most of the Psychlos are [[Punch Clock Villain
* [[Invincible Hero]]: Ah, Jonnie. Best pilot on the planet. Strong enough to bludgeon a bear to death with a gun and toss Psychlos around three at a time. Tactical and technical genius. Any setbacks he encounters are due to conditions beyond his control, and only temporary.
* [[In Working Order]]: Averted, as it takes Jonnie and his followers months of training before they can use Psychlo equipment effectively.
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* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Soft. We know that Psychlo teleportation works by swapping two patches of space, but not how a control console manages to bring this about.
* [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much]]: Ker, the non-evil Psychlo. {{spoiler|Turns out he was rescued after being left to die as a pup, and thus never got those catrist implants}}.
* [[National Stereotypes]]: The Scots are all claymore-wielding kilt-wearing [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Bravehearts]], Russians [[Vodka Drunkenski|drink vodka]] and still hang onto [[The Great Politics Mess
* [[Never Found the Body]]: {{spoiler|Terl dies off-screen in a teleporter accident, when he attempts to teleport into what is now a sun, [[Justified Trope|so there really shouldn't be any body]]. Thankfully, he ''doesn't'' make a miraculous reappearance and stays [[Deader Than Dead|good and dead]] for the rest of the book.}}
* [[No Endor Holocaust]]: Somehow, Jonnie blowing up a planet's moon has no adverse effects on it.
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** And ''they'' were ambushing ''him''.
* [[Peace Through Superior Firepower]]: {{spoiler|Jonnie combines the knowledge of the Psychlos' "ultimate bomb" and teleportation to threaten any alien aggressors with annihilation. After a few token complaints, they decide they're fine with this}}.
* [[Pistol
** [[Justified Trope|Justifiable]], as he grew up as an illiterate hunter whose weapon-of-choice (even LONG after he's introduced to guns and alien tech) were his [[Carry a Big Stick|"kill-clubs"]]. He's spent his whole life bashing things, not shooting them, so it's naturally his first instinct.
* [[Planet Looters]]: The Psychlos actually search Earth's ruins on foot, prying out every last gold filling from the corpses littering the ground (but left silver and copper and other metals, since they weren't as valuable).
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* [[Rival Turned Evil]]: Brown Limper Staffor, Jonnie's bitterly jealous neighbor, tries to usurp Earth's new government, and keeps trying to kill Jonnie over imagined slights. For his part, [[Unknown Rival|Jonnie puts Brown Limper pretty low on his list of priorities]].
* [[Rubber Forehead Aliens]]: All aliens described are humanoid, with a few animal-like characteristics or missing/rearranged facial features.
* [[Schizo
* [[Shallow Female Love Interest]]: Jonny's girlfriend, Chrissie. Her dialogue from the entirety of the book may take up a page or two, tops, her main effect on the plot is getting held hostage or otherwise being put in danger, and her love for Jonnie is so sweeping and romantic that Hubbard doesn't bother trying to express it in the book.
* [[Space Jews]]: Besides the Selachee, a race of shark-descended bankers who try to repossess the planet, we're also introduced to the Chinkos, a race of effeminate, intelligent, subservient aliens enslaved, and subsequently exterminated by the Psychlos. Jonnie even uses the phrase "tired of being Chinko polite," which combined with the author's real-life views leads to some [[Unfortunate Implications]].
** The film changed the name to ''Clinkos'', which is a) idiotic since they still behave like stereotypical Asians, and b) against Scientology rules in that they altered Hubbard's work.
* [[Stealth Pun]]: The [
* [[Subspace Ansible]]: Averted, with disastrous consequences for the Psychlo Empire. Communications and cargo can only be exchanged with a teleporter, and the rules of teleportation means that each Psychlo base only has a few scheduled hours each year to make contact with the capital. {{spoiler|So when Jonnie blows up the Psychlo homeworld, ''every other Psychlo planet'', one after another, tries to open a teleporter link into what is effectively a sun}}.
* [[Those Wacky Nazis]]: Turns out in a thousand years, the only person on the planet who remembers Hitler thinks he was a military genius and God's chosen instrument to usher in an era of peace and righteousness.
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* [[Villain Team-Up]]: Brown Limper allies himself with Terl, a Swedish neo-neo-Nazi, and the Brigantes in order to get some payback against Jonnie.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Not to imply that Terl had much to fall from, but he goes insane from paranoia when he becomes convinced that a special agent has infiltrated the workforce while investigating him. [[Shaggy Dog Story|Turns out the guy was on the run and had no idea what was going on]].
* [[We Will Use Manual Labor in
* [[We Will Use Wiki Words in
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: Jonnie heroically wipes out an entire race of aliens who are only evil because a [[The Omniscient Council of Vagueness|shadowy cabal]] of [[Strawman Political|psychiatrists]] rewired their brains that way. At no point are the Psychlos thought of as victims that could have been saved, nor does Jonnie regret his actions. In fact, the ''surviving Psychlos'' go out of their way to make sure that he isn't feeling bad about it (he wasn't), and explain that their race is better off dead.
** Probably justified, in that the surviving Psychlos are smart enough to realize that every other race they've ever oppressed is going to be gunning for them to get revenge by exterminating or enslaving them.
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