Mission Earth: An Alien Affair - It Just Gets Worse

I am continuing to make my way through the 10 volumes of L. Ron Hubbards' Mission Earth series, "the Biggest Science Fiction Dekalogy Ever Written."  But size isn't everything.

I have just finished book four, An Alien Affair.  On the back of the book are a number of blurbs praising the book, and the series.  And what I don't understand is how Orson Scott Card - who is an extrodinary writer, gifted, and talented and has written some of the greatest science fiction and fatasy novels - could describe this series as "Ironic, exciting, romantic, and hilarious," and then to add "It delighted me from the beginning." 

I'll give him "Ironic," but any snot-nosed kid can be ironic.  The series is not "exciting".  I've finished reading the first 4 books, but very little has actually happened to move the plot forward.  There's a lot of running around but nothing is accomplished.  There's no sense of danger (d'uh, he's not going to die here, we've got another 6 books to go).  The series is not romantic. God no.  There is no romance.  There's a lot of sex and sexual innuendo.  But there's nothing of romance in these books. There's nothing of love. 

And "hilarious"?  Absolutely not. Hubbard's idea of humor is to give all the characters punning names. For example:

The editor of the St Petersburg Grimes is Mr. Vitriahl.
The head of the International Pyschiatric Association is Dr. Frybrain.  (not to be confused with the Dr. Kutzbrain we met in book 3)
The District Chief of the IRS is Mr. Stony T. Blood
and
sceince authors Carl Fagin and Albert Blindstein.

This is humorous?  I suppose it might be if you're thirteen.

But putting all of that aside, there are some seriously distasteful things in An Alien Affair

The narrartor, Solatan Gris, finds himself captured by a pair of misandrists - two sadistic, men-hating lesbians - who torture him for sexual thrills.   The illustration on the cover of the book refferences these scenes of sadism and torture.

But these two lesbians (named Miss Pinch and Miss Candy Licorice!) aren't the only homosexual characters in the series.  There is also the effeminate homosexual man, Odur, whom Gris consistantly calls "Oh Dear" or "the little homo."

L. Ron did not like homosexuals.  No,not at all.

"The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in Dynamic II [sexuality] such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc... ) is actually quite ill physically. ... He is very far from culpable for his condition, but he is also far from normal and extremely dangerous to society." (Dianetics -page 122-123)