Mission Earth is a ten-volume science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel series by L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...

, founder of the Church of Scientology

Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...

. Hubbard died three months after the publication of volume 1, the rest of the book being published posthumously.

The series' initial publisher, Bridge Publications

Bridge Publications (Scientology)

Bridge Publications, Inc. is a Californian 501 non-profit corporation. It is based in Los Angeles, California, and is the Church of Scientology's North American publishing corporation. It publishes the Scientology and nonfiction works of L. Ron Hubbard...

 coined the word dekalogy, meaning "a series of ten books", to describe and promote the novel. Made up of about 1.2 million words, the epic is a "satirical science fiction adventure set in the far future." It made it to the top of bestseller lists, same as the subsequent volumes in the series.

The first five volumes of the Mission Earth series, several of which have been published posthumously, include The Invaders Plan (1985), Black Genesis: Fortress of Evil (1986), The Enemy Within (1986), An Alien Affair (1986), and Fortune and Fear (1986).

Plot

The books are written as the confessions of Soltan Gris, an agent of the CIA on the planet Voltar (the Coordinated Information Apparatus or, more simply, The Apparatus, which is run with an iron hand by its boss, Lombar Hisst), as an exposé. Each book begins with a disclaimer from Lord Invay, the head Censor, denying the very existence of the planet Earth itself and denouncing the story as rankest fiction, despite the inclusion of characters who are real and known public figures in the novel's fictional world, such as Jettero Heller and the Countess Krak.

The Voltar Confederacy wishes to conquer the planet Earth, which they regard as an important potential base on the main route of their planned invasion of the galactic centre. The conquest of Earth is scheduled for over 100 years in the future, but the Grand Council of Voltar becomes convinced that it must send a mission to prevent Earth from destroying itself through pollution and possibly war, so as not to disrupt the future timetable of conquest. The mission is assigned to Fleet Combat Engineer Jettero Heller, a character of perfection and incorruptibility. Soon after reaching Earth, he heads to New York City. He investigates why Earth is self-destructing, unaware that he is being tracked and that factions on Voltar want his mission to fail.

Unknown to Heller, Earth is also the base for a secret plan put into action by the insane, diabolically evil Lombar Hisst to seize the throne of the Empire of Voltar for himself. Hisst has been importing illegal narcotic drugs from Earth and using them to enslave the entire population of aristocratic heads of government on Voltar. By turning the entire government into drug addicts, Hisst plans to take control of the Empire for himself. Because of Earth's role as a supplier of drugs, Hisst decides that Heller's mission to save the planet must not succeed.

Lombar Hisst assigns a cowardly, sadistic, greedy stooge named Soltan Gris to supervise the mission to Earth, in order to sabotage it and destroy Jettero Heller. The majority of the story is told from Gris' point of view, with an emphasis on the comical situations Gris ends up in as he tries to stop Heller. Over the course of the novel, Gris finds himself in possession of twelve tons of pure gold, which he tries to launder

Money laundering

Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...

 through a Swiss bank account in order to keep it all for himself; he becomes a prisoner of two man-hating lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

s (who end up marrying Gris after he rapes them and thereby "cures" them of their lesbianism, but not before various ingenious tortures, one of which involve a cheese grater and chili powder); he repeatedly finds himself losing large amounts of money, becoming broke, and having to concoct wild schemes to save himself from his creditors; he has an affair with a young nymphomaniac teenage girl whom he cannot escape; he hires a hit man to kill Heller's fiancé, only to stumble through the affair and end up being a target for the hit man himself; he embarks on a long cruise through the Mediterranean (mirroring Hubbard's own voyages through the area in the 1970s); and finally, Gris becomes the target after Heller realizes that he is behind the operation to disrupt his mission.

Heller's investigations of Earth soon reveal to him that the entire planet is in the grip of a vast organized corporate conspiracy headed by the Rockecenter

Rockefeller family

The Rockefeller family , the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller , is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German origin that made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th...

 corporation and its head, Delbert John Rockecenter (the similarity to "John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

" is one of many blatant puns and references included in the series by Hubbard). Rockecenter is the head of a vast oil-producing corporation that keeps the population of Earth under control by using drugs and rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 music to keep the population sedate. (Rock music is used in the novel to spread sexual deviancy, especially homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, among the population of Earth.)

Heller's attempts to break the demonic control of Earth by Rockecenter make him a target, and the corporation uses its most dangerous weapons to destroy him: psychiatry and psychology, and a mad, idealistic public relations

Public relations

Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....

 genius by the name of J. Walter Madison (known as "J. Warbler Madman"). Madison initiates a wide-reaching public relations campaign to make Heller known to the world as the "Whiz Kid", but results in destroying Heller's reputation so that all of Heller's efforts to save the planet come to naught, as Madison's employer, Rockecenter, wanted. Fortunately, Heller's outstanding skills and abilities are reinforced by the arrival on Earth of his fiancée, the Countess Krak, and the alliance and friendship of the Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 — specifically the Corleone

Corleonesi

The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...

 family.

After a series of world-shattering events, which include the impact of an ice meteor on the Soviet Union, the world's entire oil supply being turned radioactive, and a black hole

Black hole

A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...

 orbiting the Earth (providing free energy for Heller to harness and make available to the world), Heller returns to Voltar to find that not only have Lombar Hisst's plans to enslave the government nearly succeeded, but Madison the PR madman has been loosed on the empire of Voltar and is in the process of starting a galactic civil war.

After the defeat of Hisst and Madison, a massive cover-up operation commences to wipe out the effects of PR, psychology and psychiatry, and the CIA from Voltar's empire. All mention of these subjects is censored and the planet Earth is eradicated from all star charts and similar items. As far as the Voltarans are concerned, there is no such place as planet Earth.

Volumes

1. The Invaders Plan (October 1985, ISBN 1-59212-022-9), 559 pages
2. Black Genesis (March 1986, ISBN 1-59212-023-7), 431 pages
3. The Enemy Within (May 1986, ISBN 1-59212-024-5), 393 pages
4. An Alien Affair (August 1986, ISBN 1-59212-025-3), 329 pages
5. Fortune of Fear (October 1986, ISBN 1-59212-026-1), 329 pages
6. Death Quest (January 1987, ISBN 1-59212-027-X), 490 pages
7. Voyage of Vengeance (May 1987, ISBN 1-59212-028-8), 381 pages
8. Disaster (June 1987, ISBN 1-59212-029-6), 337 pages
9. Villainy Victorious (September 1987, ISBN 1-59212-030-X), 410 pages
10. The Doomed Planet (September 1987, ISBN 1-59212-031-8), 333 pages

Page counts are from hardcover editions, and total 3992 pages.

Critical response

In spite of its sales success, Mission Earth was lambasted by critics, receiving many negative reviews. It is frequently cited within science fiction circles as one of the worst science fiction novels ever written. The influential The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is an English language reference work on science fiction.- Publication history :The first edition, edited by Peter Nicholls with John Clute and Brian Stableford appeared in 1979, published by Granada. It was retitled The Science Fiction Encyclopedia in the US...

describes the series "whose farcical overemphases fail to disguise an overblown tale that would have been more at home in the dawn of pulp magazines." More forgiving literary critics usually cite Battlefield Earth

Battlefield Earth (novel)

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 1982 science fiction novel written by the Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He composed a soundtrack to the book called Space Jazz....

as Hubbard's best work of the later years of his life. (i.e., better than Mission Earth, his only other later published work of fiction). Despite the overall negative response, the books carry blurb

Blurb

A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...

s of praise from some newspapers and well known sci-fi authors, such as Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...

 and A. E. van Vogt

A. E. van Vogt

Alfred Elton van Vogt was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded by some as one of the most popular and complex science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century: the "Golden Age" of the genre....

.

The New York Times review of the first volume, The Invaders' Plan, describes it thus: "... a paralyzingly slow-moving adventure enlivened by interludes of kinky sex, sendups of effeminate homosexuals and a disregard of conventional grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

 so global as to suggest a satire on the possibility of communication through language."

In L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, a survey of Hubbard's literary career, Marco Frenschkowski of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

The Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz is a university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg. With approximately 36,000 students in about 150 schools and clinics, it is among the ten largest universities in Germany...

 described the Mission Earth series:

The satire is not humorous, but biting and harsh, which makes the novels not easy to read. Also Hubbard somehow had lost contact with developing narrative technique

Literary technique

A literary technique is any element or the entirety of elements a writer intentionally uses in the structure of their work...

s: he writes exactly as he had done 40 years earlier. When read as entertainment Mission Earth is disappointing: it does not entertain. Many of the scenes (especially some sexual encounters) are incredibly grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

, not in a pornographic sense, but they are violently aggressive about modern American ideals. The Mission Earth novels on the whole are a subversive, harsh, poignant attack on American society in the 1980s. As such they have so far received almost no attention, which perhaps they do deserve a bit more. They also have some quite interesting characters, especially when read with a deconstructionist approach. These 11 later novels by Hubbard are not Scientology propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 literature, but have some topics in common, especially the very strong opposition against 20th century psychology and psychiatry, which is seen as a major source of evil. All open allusions to Scientology are strictly avoided. They are not as successful in their use of suspense and humour as Hubbard's early tales, but have to say perhaps more about the complex personality of their author.

Censorship attempt

In 1991, the town of Dalton, Georgia

Dalton, Georgia

Dalton is a city in Whitfield County, Georgia, United States. It is the county seat of Whitfield County and the principal city of the Dalton, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of both Murray and Whitfield counties. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 33,128...

 attempted to remove the Mission Earth books from its public library, citing what was described as "repeated passages involving chronic masochism, child abuse

Child abuse

Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...

, homosexuality, necromancy

Necromancy

Necromancy is a claimed form of magic that involves communication with the deceased, either by summoning their spirit in the form of an apparition or raising them bodily, for the purpose of divination, imparting the ability to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge...

, bloody murder, and other things that are anti-social, perverted

Perversion

Perversion is a concept describing those types of human behavior that are a serious deviation from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although it can refer to varying forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are seen by an individual as abnormal,...

, and anti-everything

Nihilism

Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...

." The attempt was unsuccessful, though this placed the Mission Earth series into the category of banned books that have been challenged in the United States. https://www.library.gatech.edu/about_us/news/banned/missionearthpage.htm

Sales controversy

The Mission Earth books were a major sales success, particularly the earlier volumes in the series, with all individual volumes reaching the New York Times bestseller list. The extent to which this reflects actual popularity is strongly questioned.
A large number of booksellers, publishing executives, and former Scientologists state that, as with other Hubbard books, the Church of Scientology engaged in a massive book-buying campaign, similar to the campaign to promote Battlefield Earth

Battlefield Earth (novel)

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 1982 science fiction novel written by the Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He composed a soundtrack to the book called Space Jazz....

, so as to deliberately inflate sales of the series in order to promote it as a best-selling work of literature. Stories of the books being sent to stores bearing other store's price tags circulated throughout the science fiction fan community.

In a two-year span, Hubbard logged 14 consecutive books on the New York Times list. Adam Clymer, a New York Times executive, said that, while the books have been sold in sufficient numbers to justify their bestseller status, "we don't know to whom they were sold." He said the newspaper uncovered no instances in which vast quantities of books were being sold to single individuals.

External links

• The Magnum Opus: Mission Earth (lronhubbard.org)
• Critical review of the Mission Earth series