Romney enjoys titles like 'Star Wars' and 'Battlefield Earth.' | Reuters photos Mitt Romney: Sci-fi fan

Newt Gingrich wanted to establish a moon colony, but it’s Mitt Romney who’s the sci-fi geek.

The former Massachusetts governor and now presumptive Republican nominee calls his affinity for the genre a “guilty pleasure,” yet openly admits to diving into titles that run the gamut from “Battlefield Earth” to “Star Wars.”


Poring over the reading lists of presidents — and White House aspirants — is routine for the political press. The book picks of candidates and incumbents offer a rare look at the personal tastes of politicians that tend to make them more personable along with things like their food choices and the song selections on their Ipods. Reporters often ascribe, fairly or not, a certain gravitas to a candidate depending on how long, and serious, their reading list.

For Romney, seen by some as a polished and wooden candidate who hesitates to show his personal side, his sci-fi picks offer a rare look at Mitt, unscripted. And for the Mormon candidate, some of those choices — such as Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard’s “Battlefield Earth,” which he cited in the 2008 campaign — have sparked controversy.

“Usually that kind of thing doesn’t come out until after the election,” Scott Tipton, a Los Angeles-based Star Trek comic book writer, said. “We didn’t find out what a geek Obama was until he got into office. It’s a weird thing because there’s like a dual-edged sword to fandom. They don’t want to be associated too strongly. But at the same time, if they do have that affinity for it, they can try to talk about it.”

Judging a politician’s “geek cred” is hard, Tipton — who is currently working on a Star Trek/Dr. Who crossover comic — said.

“Obama threw the Vulcan hand sign at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner a few years ago,” he said. “He knows enough. He knows what he’s talking about. The most connection I’ve seen from Romney lately has been the Internet meme going around where he has this big grin on this face and kind of looks like Gul Dukat from Deep Space Nine,” Tipton added. “He totally had the Gul Dukat smile!”

Lately, Romney’s choices have been more on trend. In March, Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he’s read the hit novel “The Hunger Games,” the dystopian book by Suzanne Collins in which teenagers are forced to hunt and kill each other in an annual competition.

The GOP standard-bearer took his grandchildren on a weekend outing to see the film by the same name, which has sparked a mania among young adult fans similar to the fervor surrounding the Harry Potter books and movies.

“It was nice to be able to see a flick for the first time in a long time,” Romney told Blitzer. “I enjoyed it. I actually read the books too.”

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, however, wasn’t buying it.

“He did not read the books. We know he is not telling the truth. I don’t know if he went to see the movie. Because he always, you know. ‘Do you go hunting?’ ‘Yes, I shoot varmints.’ ‘I like talkies.’ They are not called talkies anymore, Mitt! Come on.”

“He’s a nerd,” Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski noted.

“The Hunger Games” trilogy isn’t the only young adult series of which Romney says he’s a fan. He also read “Twilight,” the supernatural romance series written by Stephenie Meyer.

“I like silly stuff too. I mean, I liked the Twilight series,” Romney told NBC’s Jamie Gangel last May. “I thought that was fun…I don’t like vampires personally. I don’t know any. But my, you know my granddaughter was reading it, and I thought, wow this looks like fun.”

In 2010, Romney was also photographed with Robert Pattinson, who stars in the movie adaptation of the books . Pattinson plays Edward Cullen, a brooding young vampire who falls in love with an accident prone girl.

The two men met backstage at a taping for “The View.”

While “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games” aren’t purely science-fiction, they are part of an alternate-reality genre that one would not exactly expect the GOP standard-bearer to embrace. They show a lighter side of Romney to which voters may relate.

Romney also also reads more serious tomes. During a New Hampshire speech last week, he praised Noam Scheiber’s “The Escape Artists,” written about the Obama administration’s response to the economic downturn. Romney himself was panned for naming “Decision Points” — former President George W. Bush’s memoir — in interviews with two different networks conducted six months apart.

Romney, during his first presidential run, named “Battlefield Earth” – written by Hubbard, the Scientology founder – as his favorite book during a May 2007 Fox News interview. John Travolta — a Scientologist — turned the book into a film.

“I’m not in favor of his religion by any means,” Romney — who is a Mormon — said. “But he wrote a book called ‘Battlefield Earth’ that was a very fun science fiction book.”

Aides said later that the Hubbard book was among Romney’s favorite novels. Romney has named the Bible as his favorite book.

“Battlefield Earth” is still listed among Romney’s favorite books on his Facebook page, along with John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Incidentally, the Bible is not.

Romney’s “Battlefield Earth” pick — and the quick course correction by his staff — prompted a flurry of questions from reporters and commentators.

“First of all, many Americans already view Romney’s own faith as suspiciously cult-like in some respects – so why draw personal attention to Hubbard’s religion, Scientology, which has a more sinister reputation,” Ana Maria Cox wrote then for Time. “Putting religion aside, “Battlefield Earth” is almost universally regarded as a terrible book, even by the standards of science fiction junkies.”

Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller founder who was then a MSNBC host, called it a “curious answer…given the existence of every other book ever written.”

Even Todd Dashoff, president of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, raised an eyebrow at the choice.

Asked if he’d read the book, Dashoff told POLITICO he hadn’t – “thankfully.”

“Partly because it’s a long book and partially because L. Ron Hubbard’s stuff does have a reputation for a certain style,” Dashoff explained. “It’s not the best written stuff on the planet. It’s not going to make anybody’s list of the best science fiction. ‘Turgid’ might be the word to describe it.”

Of Romney, Dashoff said: “I would be curious to find out how much actual reading he’d done in the field. Let’s put it that way.”

“When he says that’s his favorite book, is it of five that he’s read or has he been reading [the book] for 20 years?”

Conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt — who told Romney his own favorite novel was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings — asked Romney about his science fiction chops in a May 2007 interview.

“You know, I have a guilty pleasure in some science fiction. A couple of my other favorite science fiction, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Flight, and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. There’s some great science fiction out there,” Romney told Hewitt.

“I hope your favorite movie isn’t ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,” Hewitt joked.

“I’ll stay away from that,” Romney said laughing.

Hewitt then turned the conversation to Star Trek, asking whether the former Massachusetts governor was a convention-attending ‘Trekkie.’

Romney replied: “No, I’ve stayed away from that too. I must admit, but I do enjoy Star Trek.”

On Facebook, Romney also lists “Star Wars” among his favorite films.

President Barack Obama, Romney’s competition, is also a voracious reader, known for his literary picks.

When President Barack Obama announced his reading list last summer, ahead of a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, reporters published hundreds of articles devoted to the more than 6,000 pages of reading (mostly fiction) the president planned to enjoy.

Obama’s picks included “The Bayou Trilogy,” Daniel Woodrell’s mystery collection, and “Rodin’s Debutante,” by Ward Just, set in South Side Chicago, where Michelle Obama grew up.

For Obama , his book selections since he took office are interesting, but not overtly revelatory. “I had tons of books. I read everything,” Obama told author David Mendell of his two years at Columbia University.

Excerpts from the forthcoming David Maraniss biography show Obama analyzing T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”

That’s not exactly in the same camp as Ender’s Game or Twilight. But Obama has also delved into sci-fi, once posing with a Star Trek actor. The president was also photographed with a toy light-saber in hand on the White House lawn. Leonard Nimoy — the actor who played the pointy-eared Vulcan science officer Spock – recalled meeting Obama twice. The president, Nimoy told the New York Times, raised his hand in the Vulcan salute.

“Whether it’s Mitt Romney saying that he’s a fan of Battlefield Earth and Ender’s Game …or Newt Gingrich who writes science fiction novels and wants to put a station on the moon, or Barack Obama — who is a Spiderman fan — we all kind of cheer [any mention of sci-fi by politicians] because it speaks to the mainstreaming of science fiction,” the organizer of an upcoming science fiction convention said.

Correction: Anne McCaffrey’s name was misspelled in the original version of this story.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Vivyan Tran @ 05/22/2012 05:25 PM Correction: Anne McCaffrey’s name was misspelled in the original version of this story.