To begin, allow me to tell you how I came into possession of this monster of a literary work. An undetermined amount of years ago, the entire hardback set of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth dekology was given to me by the father of a friend for a reason that he has never told me. I had mentioned that I enjoyed science fiction, and the man - with an expression that conveyed the purest of relief - was very quick to show me this dekology, shove it into my hands, and then wave me out the door. There was no damage to anything other than a bit of wear and tear on the cover of the first book, which tells me that he probably didn't even get that far. In fact, I'm thoroughly convinced that he just wanted to get rid of the things. Being 10 volumes of anywhere between 300 and 600 pages in length, I can't really blame him; these things take up quite a bit of room.

These books then spent a couple of years collecting dust in my closet until early spring of 2008, at which point I - desperate for something to take my mind off the final exams just beyond the horizon - decided that it was about time I put my impromptu gift to use.

I then proceeded to waste almost half a year trudging through this horrendously long series. This is roughly 6 months; 92 weeks; 180 days that I could have spent reading my numerous science fiction books that are infinitely better than this ten volume series.

I'm not saying that this series has no good points, gracious no! In fact, I'll begin this wall of text with the (few) positive aspects of the Mission Earth dekology. You see the first good thing as soon as you pick up the first book; the cover art! Yes, if you have the hardback editions of these books, you'll be treated by to a lovely piece of artwork by Garry Grace who, after this series, was apparently never heard of again. Seriously, try googling his name. You get nothing. Nothing. Another positive aspect is the fact that the plot, while long and full of sub-plots out the wazoo, is interesting enough to make you want to continue. In this sense - and only this sense - it is something of a page-turner. As well, some of the characters may pique your interest - in fact, I found that half the reason I was reading was to see more of certain characters and their interactions. Unfortunately, by the end of the series, most of these characters are either dead or simply never mentioned again. And this, my friends, is where we begin to explore - book by mind-numbing book - all of the things that make this series a cruel, mocking joke of a science fiction epic.

We begin with book number one, The Invaders Plan. This, believe it or not, is one of the better books of the series. It is better because, unlike the entire rest of the series, the first book seems to have a decent plot. It also gives us a nice introduction to some of the characters, including the two major ones. We first meet Soltan Gris; the sadistic, sneaky, yet ultimately cowardly narrator. We later come to Jettero Heller, who is one of two characters who are completely and undoubtedly perfect; the only other being his sister. There's a whole slew of characters in between, but these two are the ones that show up in every single book. While the story is incredibly slow (think frozen molassas on Pluto), it's a bit of a page-turner. The draw is a very good thing, because "incredibly slow" is something of an understatement. After over 500 pages of explaining Voltar, the Confederacy, and everything else under the sun, the ship for Earth doesn't take off until the very end. The very, very end. I mean, the book ends just as the ship is taking off. And guess what; almost the entire series moves at this pace! It's like a barrel of fun stuck in a horrible time warp! Oh, there's also the lovely little addition of (bleep)s. Yes, (bleep)s. Every "naughty" word is censored with a (bleep). Hubbard provides an explination of this in the form of a footnote, telling the reader that the robot that translated the book is required to censor all obsceneties. At first, I thought this was sort of clever in a vague sense. Then I read the rest of the volume. Then I read the nine others. It is no longer vaguely clever - oh no, now I flinch whenever I read anything pertaining to (bleep), parenthesis or not. It gets that annoying.

The second book, Black Genesis is where we begin to catch more glimpses of Hubbard's use of satire. Yes, Hubbard enjoys satire. In fact, he enjoys it so much that it's basically rammed down your throat in the dekology's introduction that this is a SATIRE and if you don't approve of this book then you're a horrible person because this is a SATIRE . The thing is that Hubbard's use of SATIRE involves the following steps:

1) Present the world as he and the rest of his religion sees it
2) Blow absolutely everything completely out of proportion
3) Rinse
4) Repeat

This results in a world that he describes as completely controlled by the oil industry and the evils of psychology and psychiatry. This is where we come to two realizations. For one, we have Hubbard's love of ridiculous name puns. For example; the evil oil corporation that runs the world is owned by the Rockecenter family.

Rockecenter.

I'll let that sink in for a second.

Are you ready to go on?

Great. Now imagine a metric tonne of names like this. It's obvious that Hubbard either thinks that he's a comedy genious or that his readers are idiots who wouldn't figure out this type of connection unless it he spells it out just for them. The second point is Hubbard's HATERED of psychology. Oh, how he HATES psychology. He HATES it so much that he's made it one of the main factors that attribute to how horrid his version of Earth is. He HATES it so much that he feels the need to turn anyone with any sort of interest in it into a horrible villian. He HATES it so much that he never leaves the subject alone. Ever. Throughout rest of this horrendously long series, you are constantly bombarded with Hubbard's reasoning as to how evil and immoral psychology and psychiatry is. Constantly. It is continuous. It is neverending. It is a major contributor to why, by the end of this series, you will most likely want to desecrate Hubbard's grave with your own bodily fluids.

There's very little to say about the third volume, The Enemy Within. Like the rest of the series, it's very slow, very long, and very SATIRE. But then we have volume four, An Alien Affair. Ooh yes, this volume. This volume introduces Hubbards horrific, twisted idea of sexuality to this already horribly opinionated epic. There is no normal sex in this series. What we have is bondage, BDSM involving painful food items, BDSM involving painful everything items, underaged sexual antics, and the most horrid descriptions of said activities I have ever seen. I don't care how much you may be into this sort of thing - you will not be aroused by any of this. Ever. Oh, and did I mention the lesbian sex? Yes, Hubbard describes lesbian sex only as painful scratching and biting and...well, pain. Golly gee whiz, guys! You think this says something about the author? I mean, it's not like he beats a general hatred of homosexuals into the reader throughout the whole series!

Oops, wait, yes he does.

Oh, and then we have how the lesbians in this series are "cured" - by being raped. Yes, you heard right: after the main character VIOLENTLY RAPES THEM, they are automatically cured and grovel at his feet for more. At first, I thought this might be some sort of collective ploy against the main character. Why, perhaps they were just trying to lure him into a sense of calm, only to turn around and give him what-for!

And then it never happened. I was disappointed, mostly because...Goddamnit Hubbard, what the hell.

There's little to say about the fifth volume, Fortune of Fear. It's basically more of the huge plot, more SATIRE, more horrendous sex that will make you want to vomit, and more of Gris failing everything. The sixth volume, Death Quest, is basically the same thing. The seventh volume, Voyage of Vengeance, is filler. The entire thing is filler. I'm not even joking.

And then we have volume eight, Disaster. Volume eight is, believe it or not, the best book in the series! This is due to the first half of the book, which is fairly non-stop action and actually a real page-turner. If the entire series was written like the first half of this book, it would be both shorter and better quality! And then I wouldn't be typing this wall of pain and text!

And then, suddenly, in the middle of the book, the speaker changes. All the action stops. You will never hear anything from Gris' point of view again. Now you have to trudge through the second half of the book, which explains the life and times of the new narrator, Monte Pennwell.

Goddamnit, Hubbard. I thought you were getting better for a second.

The ninth book, Villainy Victorious, starts to wrap up this whole train wreck of a series by repeating, time and time again, that psychology, drugs, rock n' roll, and media public relations (PR in the books) are EVIL and should be eradicated from society, lest we cause the Earth to implode or some inane reasoning like that. And then we bring the whole thing to a close with the tenth volume, The Doomed Planet. In its entirety, this volume ends the whole thing with one revelation - we can only save our society through two means:

1) Merging all world powers together into one all-powerful entity that works towards the good of the people
2) Completely censoring anything to do with psychology and psychiatry, so as to release society from their demonic grasp

Yes, this is what the reader was forced to crawl through ten volumes for. This one revelation, the effectiveness of which is verified only by one of the basic beliefs of Scientology; "Mankind is basically good."

And now you know why I am so filled with rage.

And with this statement, we conclude our magical journey through one of the most terrible examples of science fiction literature ever spawned. Despite a vaguely interesting plot, the books are still ridiculously hard to get through due to all of the points listed above. If you learn anything from this series, however, you will learn this:

Bigger is not always better.