Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Mission Accomplished?

This is certainly overdue, and probably no surprise at this point, but Mission Spork is over.  I was hesitant to declare as such, partly because I was waiting to see if I had one last essay in me, but mostly because after three years and a month working on this project, it's a little hard to let go. 

It was a lot of fun, mostly.  Some of the chapters ended up being pretty unpleasant, and sometimes all the stupid really got to me, but there's something rather cathartic about ranting at bad literature.  I'm actually feeling out of sorts for want of a bad Hubbard novel to spork. 

So today I picked up some more from my friendly local used bookstore.

I've done nothing more than check out their covers so far, and need to do at least a quick skim-through before I go any further.  I wouldn't want to start something only to find that the book I'm looking at is merely mediocre and therefore boring - Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth have spoiled me by being extraordinarily bad, and I'm worried that the rest of Hubbard's works won't meet those lofty (abyssal) standards.  On the other hand, I've long wondered just how far Hubbard fell as his career continued, as his literal cult status meant he didn't have to worry about quality when it came to finding readers for his works.  Comparing his last two novels with some earlier works could be interesting even if the books themselves are not.

All this to say, Mission Spork is done, I am not.  I'm not sure if this next project will be another blog or if it's time to put these things on one website, but at any rate, when I get started there will be an announcement on this blog.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the ride, and that you'll join me on the next one!

5 comments:

  1. So are we talking about his pulp serials before he founded a religious movement, or stuff like Dianetics and the (at one point) exclusive texts such as the Xenu legend?

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  2. Thanks for doing these! I've been following since near the beginning, and I've had a lot of fun along the way.

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  3. Thank you for all of these, I have found it most entertaining.

    Regarding what to do next, Atlas Shrugged is sadly taken already.

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  4. I looked, and I can't actually find a spork of Atlas Shrugged. Does anyone know a good one?

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  5. It's not actually a spork, but there's this:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/

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