Timewaster's Guide Archive

Departments => Books => Topic started by: EUOL on May 12, 2004, 10:25:39 PM

Title: Strange Gift....
Post by: EUOL on May 12, 2004, 10:25:39 PM
So, Jim Connely--the WTOF publisher--sent me a big box in the mail via the English department.  (They called me several times while I was on vacation, complaining that they were tripping over it and I need to come get it.)

I picked it up today, and what did I find?  A ten-volume matching set of leather-bound MISSION EARTH books.  

I don't know quite what to think.  Jim's been eagerly trying to get me to use Hubbard's books in my class, and I already promised him I'd use the WOTF anthology.  

Anyway, the books are WAY cool.  I have to admit, though, that the Mission Earth series is kind of mediocre.  Anyone else read any of the books?
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers on May 12, 2004, 11:24:03 PM
my little brother loved them. he read them all about a dozen times each.

He was a weird teenager
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Maxwell on May 12, 2004, 11:24:50 PM
my freinds danny and kkevin have read them(scientologists)
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Spriggan on May 12, 2004, 11:34:29 PM
wtof?
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: EUOL on May 12, 2004, 11:39:42 PM
Sorry, I meant WOTF.  Writers of the Future.

Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Entsuropi on May 12, 2004, 11:52:40 PM
Uhm, i read the first book. Mediocre is the word i'd use.
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: angel on May 13, 2004, 03:08:28 AM
yeah I didnt like them that much...
btw how's the spooky one doing?
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Lieutenant Kije on May 13, 2004, 06:16:55 PM
I only got a chapter into book one, and decided not to continue.
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on May 27, 2004, 03:40:24 AM
My Dad read them all. I think he was entertained. He didn't really comment much about them except to say that it got risqué in parts. (Which was more of a big deal back then, I guess.)

This, however, is an eye-opener--an account by the man who edited Hubbard's manuscripts into the form that was publishable. http://www.skeptictank.org/mearth.htm

I think I heard somewhere though that Battlefield Earth was a good book.

I also heard that Hubbard's writing went downhill after he died.
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: Spriggan on May 27, 2004, 04:33:07 AM
Boy that's a disturbing site, right up JPs alley.  Full of romurs, assumpsions and a all out hate of all religion.
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: JP Dogberry on May 27, 2004, 05:07:17 AM
How is that up my alley? I address your points logically:

1) A rumour in year 4 made me cry. I've had a loathing of them since.

2) Assumptions. I don't make "assumptions". I make "factual statements from proof yet to be discovered."

3) I don't hate religion .

Ok, I do hate religion, but not religious people, God, Faith, mediatation, prayer or what have you. Just the religion itself.
Title: Re: Strange Gift....
Post by: EUOL on May 27, 2004, 06:19:26 AM
Yeah, Ookla, I read that after I got the gift.  You can find it several places on the web, apparently.  I'm not sure how much I trust the guy--after all, he admits himself that he wasn't trained as an editor and he seems fairly bitter about Hubbard.

However, I'll admit, Hubbard sounds like a pretty strange guy.  My ME experience wasn't a very good one--I didn't really get it.  I think I was too young to understand that it was satire, and I was looking forward to a big, cool, ten-book space-opera.  I'm surprised I even got through the three or four books that I did.