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Many of the reviews state that, in their opinion, this book is not science fiction at all. In my mind it is one of the best sorts of science fiction. It gets you thinking "What if things worked this way?" I don't agree with all of his conclusions. But the best science fiction gets you thinking. If you read science fiction from some of the best authors of the 50s and 60s, there is a lot that they got wrong. But there was also a lot that they got right. The important thing was that they felt free to speculate.
The action is definitely there in the book too. It was a wonderful story to read. The only reason I didn't rate it 5 stars was that the end was a bit "deus ex machina", but I still enjoyed it.

They're called the Hyadeans, and they've come to help. They promise to bring order and prosperity to a politically fragmented, often chaotic Earth. But are they really what they seem? Who are they really helping?

As a long-time fan of James Hogan, I pounced on the paperback edition of "The Legend That Was Earth" the day it came out. Forewarned by the negative reviews posted on this site to date, I didn't get my hopes up too much. But I needn't have worried. While the book admittedly isn't among Hogan's greatest, it was still very hard for me to put down. I devoured it within a single 36-hour period.

The story starts out a little slowly. Wealthy socialite Roland Cade leads a comfortable existence as a "fixer", a man who knows how to get Terrans and Hyadeans together to trade often-illicit goods and services. He's the man to see if, say, an off-worlder is interested in procuring exotic Navajo sand art for shipment back to the home world, where everything is utilitarian, drab and grey. He knows how to "go with the flow," not worrying about the Big Picture. He organizes cocktail parties filled with shallow people making insipid conversation. Their phraseology feels stilted, wooden, unnatural. People just don't talk like that in the real world! Are the naysayers right? Has Mr. Hogan lost his edge???

It was enough to really get on my nerves. But not to worry: a few chapters in, Roland gets a rude wakeup call when he comes across his ex-wife, who works for an armed resistance movement. It doesn't take him long to discover the dark side of the alien presence, as his life is turned upside-down. He falls in with people who have a genuine purpose to their lives. They talk like normal people. And he and his new-found friends discover that it isn't a strict conflict between Terrans and Hyadeans. There are "good" and "bad" people on both sides. Who will prevail?

Granted, the themes Mr. Hogan explores are familiar territory for those who, like me, have read most of his works. He is very much a proponent of Libertarianism. At least one of the villains in Hogan books always manages to self-destruct in a spectacularly creative way. The bad guys are into big-time feudalism, and they'll stop at nothing to get their way. The end is somewhat predictable. But that's OK by me: in this crazy, mixed-up world, "predictable" has its appeal. Do we really want the bad guys to win? Just this once?

Picture "Legend" as mental comfort food. Do you complain because you've eaten chocolate a thousand times before?

As has become Mr. Hogan's custom in recent novels, he explores exotic scientific theories. In the case of "Legend", it is the Hyadeans who believe in the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Catastrophism and alternatives to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Between several of the chapters are little italicized sections describing the theories and their implications. They're not, for the most part, central to the plot, but they make for fun reading. Whether or not they're valid theories I leave to the scientists to hash out.

All in all, I don't regret spending the money on this book. Serious Hogan fans should give this one a chance.

This is only the second Hogan book that I have read. The first, "Cradle of Saturn", dealt with somewhat bizarre scientific theories. In this book, he again espouses alternate science theories as the basis of his story.
However, The science fiction is ancillary to the story. Hogan wrote a story of intrigue and suspense. The Hyadeans did not have be aliens for the book to work because the plot doesn't hinge on the alien issue. Rather, the book focuses on development of the action caused by conflict in cultures.
The story reminds me a lot of a Robert Ludlum plot. Cade is the reluctant hero who experiences a life changing paradigm shift. He is thrown into a world of conflict that he refused to beleive existed. Hogan stresses his development, not the alien presence, to create his plotline. The characterization is well thought out and developed. However, the ending is somewhat predictable and contrived.
All in all, it's an enjoyable and easy read.

This book was my first introduction to James Hogan, and after reading this book, I see him with blistering rage and vitriol. Among the problems with this book: the slowness, one-dimensional, boring characters, predictable, disappointing and hatefully idealistic nature of this book make this one of the worst books I have read in quite some time. Additionally, I have never read or scene a work of fiction that made me so livid since "The Village" and "Divergent (film)." Below I have summarized by critiques of this book centered on the six major points stated above.
• I: What made "The Legend that was Earth" particularly bad was the way the pacing of this book was on par with paint drying. Either the characters were just walking about doing nothing. Although some were doing something that allowed something to happen, these characters were either borderline utilitarian or were placed in the background of the story while the characters the story focused on trekked off to the next scene.
• II: Beyond the characters chugging along on a roadshow of a story, the story and characters are some of the most one-dimensional I have encountered thus far. There is simply nothing about them that stands out as unique people that makes me invest in their story, let alone waste the energy lending some emotion besides boredom and anger watching them act out this cookie-cutter of a plot. Similarly, the motives and dilemmas of this book never strays from the expected or black-and-white nature of the story and the ideas it fails to explore.
• III. This one's pretty self-explanatory: the characters and the entire Hyadean race are boring! The characters in this book are either generic archetype that never shy much from their base-personality, or have been so underdeveloped that they become nonexistent in the reader's mind by book's end. The only strong character is Marie, the female lead and ex-wife of the main character, but even she seems shackled to the archetype of the idealist militant for the majority of the book, only to become the disillusioned frail damsel by the end. Cade's even worse since he is non-existent. He never becomes passionate or develops much emotion or characterization throughout the book, and has also surrendered his proactive potential to characters who do everything else for him in his caravan of gingerbread-men. On a side-note, the Hyadean race is among some of the most boring alien races I have encountered. Even in some of the worst science fiction films and books managed to attach something to their races that made them stand out in my mind. These aliens are just dull blue-people that the Terrans are too stupid to debate or question the never-explained advanced nature of these guys. Moreover, nothing is expressed about their society, culture, not even their language is divulged that adds some signature merit.
• IV: Even without doing any research into the plot, I could figure out the end by a fifth of the way in. I won’t go into the generic pace of the plot and ending, but suffice to say that it’s announced like a parade procession throughout the beginning. The narrative itself doesn’t add much to the drama and only adds to the tedious and dull procession of the story.
• V: When I went into this book, I thought it was going to be a story that illustrates a possible breakdown of relations with an alien race, leading to a war and the consequences of the decisions made that led to the war. What I got was some pretentious story that ripped off the premises of "Macross" and Space Battleship "Yamato" that left no impact on my other than a burning desire to find Chryse and blast it to smithereens.
• VI: Above all my hate for this book, the liberalist idealism throughout this book is most infuriating. This book is a propaganda piece written to idealistically to portray the evils of capitalism and conservatism while expounding the lofty virtues of socialism and liberalism. The book portrays Europe and the United States are an evil bent on selling us out to an alien power who brings in their technology to exploit the Earth, while treating China and California as true democracies and heroic countries that save the Earth from the aliens. Moreover, the story outright expresses globalization in the same way some pretentious high-school or idealistic college student would view the subject, and with the same amount of understanding and bipartisan strive to explore the issue. And if that weren’t enough, the story actually throws on the breaks for several chapters to go on a socialist rant about how the West had sold out the world to the aliens, and gives no opportunity for the opposition to present its case or fault in their own attitude towards the new reality of the interplanetary economy and relations. It feels like it’s beating you over the head to instill its leftist message. Lastly, way the book ends with expressing how the heroes, who by now seem like characters from a Soviet film, work as agents to allow the Red Revelation to engulf the Earth and crush the opponents of Comrade Stal….I mean the Earth. By the end I felt cheated and just got done listening to some liberal arts major gush over their new-found passion for the left after reading the introduction to the "Communist Manifesto."
My recommendation for "The Legend that was Earth:" avoid it at all costs and look elsewhere for more engaging science fiction with more personality than this waste of existence.