Mitt Romney lists “Battlefield Earth” as favorite novel.

From the article:

When asked his favorite novel in an interview shown yesterday on the Fox News Channel, Mitt Romney pointed to “Battlefield Earth,” a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. That book was turned into a film by John Travolta, a Scientologist.

A spokesman said later it was one of Mr. Romney’s favorite novels.
“I’m not in favor of his religion by any means,” Mr. Romney, a Mormon, said. “But he wrote a book called ‘Battlefield Earth’ that was a very fun science-fiction book.” Asked about his favorite book, Mr. Romney cited the Bible.

A few things:

a) “Battlefield Earth” is a notoriously horrid novel (and movie). Anyone into this variety of science fiction isn’t really into science fiction. It’s not that I’m some kind of scifi elitist (hell, I guiltily enjoyed Matthew Reilly’s “Ice Station”, which is awful writing), it’s just that with such well-known, popular, quality science fiction novels as “Dune”, “Snow Crash”, “Ender’s Game”, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “Slaughterhouse Five”, and myriad others, anyone who names “Battlefield Earth” over those has got to be at least partially retarded.

b) “The Bible“? Come on. That’s like answering “If you had a time machine and could go to any point in history, which historical figure would you want to have dinner with?” with “Jesus”. It’s just such a cliché, bland, grotesquely palatable, “I’m placating the religious” response that you might as well just drop the conversation and offer blowjobs in exchange for votes. Then again, it’s not like the question itself was really anything hardball.

c) Given that Mormonism and Scientology are both religions with goofy origins, authors of questionable character and some similar themes (e.g. the science fiction elements in both – in Mormonism, for example, among many, many other things, it is said that every faithful couple will be given their own asteroid to populate), I’m not really sure he has stable enough a footing for casting judgment.

d) Fucking “Battlefield Earth”!?

Okay, okay, I know people are supposedly really into it, but, well, first, I’m not really sure what I feel about something that I can describe as “right up there with ‘Atlas Shrugged’”, and second, if Scientologists are known to buy Hubbard’s novels to get them into “Top Books” lists, I wouldn’t put it below them to rig votes in a book popularity survey. Also, I mean, just look at that fucking list – four Rand books and two Hubbard in the top ten? “Battlefield Earth” ranked tens higher than “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “A Clockwork Orange” and “A Handmaid’s Tale”? I suspect something may be amiss.

Edit: My answer to the question would, of course, be “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”. I’m not sure if it’s exactly my most favorite – it’s definitely in the top five or ten, which are roughly all tied, really – but I’d love to say it just to fuck with people.

Jabberwock