Mission Earth: Black Genesis Fortress of Evil - the awefulness continues

Give up. Maintain a low expectation. There will be no reward, no prize at the bottom of the box. There will be no buried treasure. L. Ron Hubbard’s 1.2 million word Mission Earth series is a literary black hole, an abyss, a bottomless pit of despair.

So, I can hear you asking, why am I subjecting myself to it? Why am I doggedly plowing through this morass if there can be no expectation of reward? I have, I guess, become rather fascinated with L. Ron Hubbard and with his sci-fi religion, Scientology.

You don't get rich writing science fiction.
If you want to get rich, you start a religion. 1
               L. (Lafayette) Ron Hubbard

In Black Genesis Fortress of Evil, the second volume of the Mission Earth series, Hubbard continues the story of Jettero Heller – a Voltarian agent sent to Earth to save the planet from it’s own self destruction and of Soltan Gris – another Voltarian agent whose mission is to sabotage Heller’s mission so that a steady supply of narcotics can be delivered from Earth to Voltar.

But none of that matters.
Nothing in the first two volumes, nothing in over 900 pages has anything to do with this.

Jettero spends all of Black Fortress allying himself with a mafia family and enrolling in classes at Empire college. Soltan Gris spends the book remotely watching Heller via an implant in Hellar’s skull, that and kicking children to make them cry and complaining that his concubine hasn’t been yet been delivered.

But I am coming to understand something about Hubbard the man. I think that he wanted to be perceived like his hero Jettero Heller – good, noble, pure, idealistic, virtuous, generous, and endowed with a superhuman intelligence. But he has lavished such careful attention on the villainous Gris, that I am convinced that this is a more accurate representation of Hubbard’s character.

There is no more ethical group on this planet than ourselves. 2

Soltan Gris hates everybody, thinks everyone else in the world is uncultured, incompetent, and up to no good. He sees in everyone else what is true about his own self. This is, psychologically speaking, projection – but don’t let Hubbard hear me say that. He hated psychologists and psychiatrists.

He also hated the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, - well any government agency. He also hated educators, journalists, homosexuals and women.

The misogyny in these books is unmistakable. There are only two kinds of women in The Mission Earth books (at least in the first two, the two that I’ve read) – Women are either cold hearted men hating bitches or sluts willing to spread for the first man who comes along. In the first volume the reader was introduced to Countess Krak. This, I thought, was just an unfortunate name, but in the second volume we meet Soltan Gris’ concubine Utanc. It’s an anagram. A very crude anagram.

But don’t let anyone ever say that the Mission Earth books are sophisticated. They’re not. They’re juvenile. They’re puerile. They are the kind of books that a Jr. High version of Dwight Shrute (from The Office) would write.

Some random examples of the quality of writing in Black Genesis:

Miles from the U.N. area, and now in the garment district, Heller was clickety-clacking along, on his way to I knew not where, but if I knew Heller, up to no good. -pg. 248

“Kid,” said Vantagio, “you saved my life! I never before seen such terrific shooting!” He regarded Heller for a bit. “How did you come to get here, anyway?” - pg. 242


I groaned. I was dealing with an idiot, not a special agent. Special agents don’t eat candy! They smoke cigarettes! – pg. 165

I'm reading Dianetics now.  I'll write it up when I finish.  Wish me luck.

1 Response to a question from the audience during a meeting of the Eastern Science Fiction Association on (7 November 1948), as quoted in a 1994 affidavit by Sam Moskowitz.


2 "Keeping Scientology Working" (7 February 1965)