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Battlefield Earth (novel): Difference between revisions
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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>, but critical response was less than enthusiastic, citing the novel's [[Doorstopper|length]], [[Arc Fatigue|plotting]], and [[Flat Character|characters]]. Nevertheless, the idea of [[The Film of the Book|making a movie]] persisted until finally being realized in the year 2000, starring [[John Travolta (Creator)]] (who personally bankrolled the project), Forest Whitaker, and Barry Pepper. It was a pretty spectacular bomb, but you can read about its tropes [[Battlefield Earth (Film)|here]] if you're after some [[Snark Bait]].
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=== The novel contains examples of: ===
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* [[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
* [[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.
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* [[Earth Is a Battlefield]]: You'd ''think'' so, given the title, but no. The great uprising against the Psychlos consists of a one-sided ground assault against the main mining base and fifteen planes splitting up to strafe the other fifteen bases. When other aliens invade later, fighting is centered around bases in Africa, Russia and Scotland, and is primarily an air war.
* [[Earthshattering Kaboom]]: Humanity wins the war by {{spoiler|teleporting nuclear "planet buster" bombs to the Psychlo homeworld. [[Hand Wave|Since the greedy Psychlo have mined their home planet to the extent that its riddled with abandoned shafts and tunnels]], this results in a chain reaction that turns the planet into an immense fireball. Jonnie wonders if he's turned the planet into a new star.}}
* [[Easily
* [[Embarrassing Middle Name]]: The naming conventions of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's home village also gives us his father Timothy Brave Tyler, his rival Brown Limper Staffor, and his neighbor Tom Smiley Townsen.
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: The Psychlos developed a bomb capable of snuffing out an entire planet, but never used it militarily (because that risks destroying precious gold!), only using it to dispose of planets they'd completely mined out ([[Fridge Logic|...why?]]). Jonnie, however, has no such reservations.
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* [[Just Between You and Me]]: Credit where it's due, Terl waits until an enemy's in his coffin to gloat and make self-incriminating statements for Jonnie to record.
* [[Kid Sidekick]]: Bittie MacLeod desperately wants to be Jonnie's squire, while Chrissie's little sister Pattie (eight years old) tags along when Chrissie ventures into the wilderness in search of Jonnie.
* [[Low Culture, High Tech]]: The Psychlo's and the humans.
* [[Made of Explodium]]: The "breathe-gas" Psychlos respire has an ''extreme'' reaction to even minute amounts of radiation.
* [[Mass Teleportation]]: In the wake of the [[Depopulation Bomb|gas drone attack]], the Psychlos teleported tanks and infantry to mop up the survivors.
* [[Meaningful Funeral]]: At the start of the book, the lack of one for Jonnie's father is what tips us off that his fellow villagers are hopelessly passive, while Jonnie's efforts to get one show how he's a man of action. Also unfortunately an [[Establishing Character Moment]] where we see him coldly bully his family and neighbors into doing what he wants.
* [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds]]: {{spoiler|In all fairness, Jonnie wasn't ''trying'' to destroy every planet in the Psychlo Empire with a nuclear chain reaction. He just wanted to nuke the hell out of the teleporter site on Psychlo and got more boom than was expected}}.
* [[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 Up|old Soviet traditions]], Swiss-Germans are all master craftsmen or ''bankers'' (in a post-apocalyptic world where most tribes have not yet rediscovered metal!), the Frenchman [[Cheese
* [[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.
** Actually, it only dissolves, and then contracts and solidifies again. It never actually explodes.
* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: The Psychlos are constantly screwing each other over with obscure rules, and after some blunders by Terl the company's home office just ignores any further missives from him.
* [[One
** 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}}.
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* [[Psychic Powers]]: Terl believes Jonnie and "his mate" share a psychic bond, when in reality Jonnie just has some men checking on Chrissie's condition.
* [[Ragnarok Proofing]]: Justified in some cases; a library Jonnie visits was preserved by Chinko sociologists, and the Tommy guns he outfits his men with had been sealed in grease and buried for a millennium. Yet the humans find books and scraps of paper in other places, are able to renovate ruins that should have crumbled away centuries ago, and spruce up tactical nukes from an old bunker without too much trouble.
* [[Riding Into the Sunset]]: {{spoiler|In the end, after [[What Measure Is a Non
* [[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.
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* [[Upgrade Artifact]]: The Psychlos have technology that beams pure knowledge into your brain via your skin, allowing Jonnie to become an [[Instant Expert]].
* [[Villain Ball]]: As early as the first chapter it's made clear that Terl is ambitious, scheming, and well-educated, but still a dumbass. To pick one of many examples, the first thing Terl does after capturing Jonnie is to nearly kill his prisoner by tossing him inside a vehicle filled with breathe-gas, then acting shocked when the human starts choking.
* [[Villain Team
* [[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 The Future]]: The Psychlo have drone mining devices to operate in extreme conditions, but are apparently too cheap to use them on a planet with irradiated areas, [[Hand Wave|thus allowing the plot to happen]].
* [[We Will Use Wiki Words in The Future]]: Gems such as "man-animal," "kill-club," "breathe-gas," "picto-camera," "compo-gradients," "crap-lousy" and "rat-brain" will hurt the same the first and five hundredth time you read them.
* [[What Measure Is a Non
** 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.
* [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]]: Averted. Gold is highly-valued in all sixteen known universes, so once the Psychlos nabbed the Voyager probe and noticed that the coordinates to Earth were on a gold-plated disc, the promise of shiny yellow rocks was worth funding a planetary invasion. Played straight when the Psychlo looters ignored silver and copper coins while scrounging up every last golden earring.
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