Mission Earth 10 - The Doomed Planet

Here it is,  The Doomed Planet, the 10th and final volume of L Ron Hubbard's arid and interminable Mission Earth Series.

I've been seeing these books in libraries ever since I can remember but had never picked them up.  And now, 1.2 million or so words later, I almost wish I never had.  LRH may have been a decent writer during his early years, writing adventure stories for pulp magazines, but by the end of his life he had completely forgotten his craft.  He was no longer a story teller.  The Mission Earth books are not about story - they're not even really about people. The Mission Earth  books were merely an excuse for Hubbard to spout his venom and bile in a nearly endless rant against anyone and everyone who had ever done him wrong.

LRH poison penned psychologist, psychiatrists, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, Universities, Homosexuals, Punk Rock music, Religious leaders, Public Relations and Advertisers and, and, and, and...  The only people who don't receive this bitter treatment are the members of Godfather mafia styled organized crime family (LRH even named them the Corleone mob!)  It's curious that these criminals are the only one to be treated as righteous and noble.   Why is it that the only people LRH didn't despise were criminals?  Because he, himself, was criminal? 

Here in the final volume the series' hero, Jettero Heller, single-handedly restores the Voltarian Confederation's government after a violent revolution and forestalls the invasion that has been threatened in the whole series. And he does this simply by making an official declaration that the planet Earth does not exist.

Wait... That's it?  1.2 Million words to play ostrich?  1.2 million words to pretend that the things we don't like don't exist.?  Seriously? 

Monte Penwell, the very first investigative journalist on Voltar,  has, in the course of his investigation of this story, become infatuated with all the things from Earth that have never been used on Voltar - things like: psychiatry and psychology, drugs, Public Relation, Drugs, Sex, and Spies and so on.  Penwell is angry with Heller and the restored government for covering up the mission to Earth and concludes his work (ostensibly the books we've been reading...) with a hymn to encourage the people of Voltar to wake up and recognize the cover up that has been perpetrated and to take up the mission to invade earth.

ODE TO EARTH

Oh, Earth, oh, Earth, you luscious globe,
You beckoning, wine-fat treasure-trove,
You whet our hunger as you spin
And lure us with your wealth to win.
You saved my life with your PR.
I triumph now without a scar!
Your spy techniques are quite sublime
And can be used to undermine.
And who could think but to extol
Your psych and psych for mind control.
Who would refuse to cut their fug
If offered some divine Earth drug?
Who can deny that men will drool
For just one shot of good white mule?
And no musician would heed sneers
If he had Punk Rock to drown their ears.
And who, pray tell, would show aversion
To lovely butt and mouth perversion?
And Earth, you number in your riches
Sex that converts girls to (bleeepches).

Did I say sex? Oh, you excel!
Never has such concentration
Been levelled at self-gratification!

It goes on like this for another two pages.  But I can't take very much more... I'll skip down to the last couple of lines.

Don't plead, O, Earth, for mercy now!

Your time has come and this I vow:
Each thing you know we will suck up
And toast your death with blood in cup!
Surrender? No, it is too late.
Just weep while solders fornicate
Upon your grave up there so high,
So soon will be our Voltar sky.
But, cheer up, Earth! When soul has flow
It will in Voltar find its home.
Your wisdom wise like graveyard flowers
Will come to us and will be ours!
So, Earth, just bare to us your breast
And let us suckle you in death!
VOLTAR!  SEEK NOT MORE OF MY PERSUASION!

LAUNCH ON TIME THE EARTH INVASION!

THE (TRIUMPHANT) END!

I cannot comprehend how the adherents of the Church of Scientology could read these and still think that every word LRH spoke / wrote was genius. I cannot understand how the founder of their religion can be revered in the face of this series.  If Jesus of Nazareth had written something like this, I'm not sure that I could continue to call myself a Christian. 

The books of LRH's Mission Earth series should be a troublesome source of perpetual embarrassment to all Scientologists. I suggest that they should purchase and destroy every copy still in print and then, like Mission Earth hero Jettero Heller, issue a proclamation that the series has never existed.