To The Stars (novel) - Reception

Reception

To the Stars was nominated by the World Science Fiction Society for a "Retro" Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2001, losing to The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein. Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth did not receive a Hugo nomination, and Scientologists showed up at the 1983 World Science Fiction Convention passing out an advertisement titled: "To the Stars", which was devoted to Battlefield Earth. The "To the Stars" science-fiction magazine was published by Bridge Publications.

The book generally received positive reception from literature critics. Publishers Weekly described it as "golden SF from the Golden Age", and The Harvard Crimson called it "one of the great classics" of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. A reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly commented: "Hubbard brilliantly evokes the vastness of space and the tragedy of those who would conquer it", and called the book "one of his finest works". Alan Cheuse reviewed the book in the San Francisco Chronicle, writing: "As in a number of groundbreaking -- or time-breaking, I suppose we ought to say -- works of science fiction, the science behind the story is more interesting than the fiction itself. Hubbard is a thinker who writes, rather than a writer who thinks, as most masters are." Cheuse highlighted the book among his 2004 literature holiday picks in a piece for National Public Radio's program All Things Considered: "Before he began founding new religions, Hubbard was one of the country's most prolific pulp science fiction writers, and this book is one of his best." Georges T. Dodds, columnist for WARP, newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy association writes "besides being among the earliest hard science fiction works to consider time-dilation effects in long distance near-light-speed space travel, (To The Stars) is a pretty entertaining story."

Barnes & Noble's Explorations editor, Paul Goat Allen, put the book at number eight on his list of the top ten science fiction/fantasy novels for 2004, writing: "After more than half a century, 'To the Stars' is just as timely, just as awe-inspiring, just as profoundly moving as it was in 1950." In a review of the book for the website SF Site, Georges T. Dodds writes: "To the Stars, besides being among the earliest hard science fiction works to consider time-dilation effects in long-distance near-light-speed space travel, is a pretty entertaining story." Writing in the Marburg Journal of Religion, Marco Frenschkowski of the University of Mainz described the book as a "melancholy tale about interplanetary travel and the effects of time dilation". University of California, Irvine physics professor and science fiction author Gregory Benford wrote positively of the book in an article for the science fiction website "Crows Nest": "Writers had used Einstein's special relativity theory before in stories, but Hubbard brought to his novel the compressed story telling and pulp skills that had stood him in over a decade of professional writing."

Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin described the 1954 edition as "a fast-paced and grim adventure . . . just short of absurdity, but interesting nevertheless." Anthony Boucher panned the novel, calling it "a surprisingly routine and plotless space opera."