# I Pit(y) Orson Scott Card **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 8, 2012, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342 "2012-11-08T06:44:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/21 "2012-11-08T16:54:48Z")
I have so often found that some writer’s/musician’s/artist’s politics are at odds with my own that it no longer surprises me. I get that you might be so repulsed at someone’s views you no longer wish to support their creative works via purchase, and you stop recommending him to your friends, but really, dump all your old OSC books that you enjoyed simply because you find out he’s a bigot? That I don’t get - all you’re doing is depriving yourself of something you’ve enjoyed. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/22 "2012-11-08T16:57:09Z")
Yea, that screed was more pathetic then anything else. I think OSC needs to find a religion that will let him drink, as he certainly sounds like a guy in need of some self-medication. Still doesn’t make me like Ender’s Game any less though. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/23 "2012-11-08T17:10:08Z")
Sometimes I think we were better off before the Internet, when we could like something without having to be exposed (at least without a lot of effort) to its creator’s personal opinions. I read one OSC book (I think it was called “The Lost Boys”) and liked it. I don’t like his personal opinions, but then again, I go to Tom Cruise movies and that doesn’t make me a fan of Scientology, either. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/24 "2012-11-08T17:10:12Z")
> [@al27052](#): > > However, i do have a little understanding and compassion here–he was hoping that Mormonism would become mainstream, instead of the weird, misunderstood little cult that it always has been and probably will be. I think ‘little’ is the operative word here. “Weird, misunderstood little cult” sounds pretty bereft of compassion. > [@](#): > > He used to be a halfway normal human being like 15 years ago. I remember. I met him. Totally normal, nice person, easy to talk to. He’s held his views on women and homosexuality for a long time now. Even when he was writing the Ender’s series. > [@](#): > > I don’t know what happened, but I wish that he’d have another, bigger stroke…sudden, painless, and lethal. He’s taking all the love that his less idiotic fans have had for him over the last 25 years and twisting it into confused loathing and embarrassment. How sweet of you. Very compassionate to wish he’d die. The less idiotic of his fans who admire his ability as a sci-fi writer have been aware of his less admirable qualities the whole time. > [@](#): > > I wish he were dead. he makes me sad. Which makes him a better person than you. He has some odious views but writes excellent sci-fi. You want him dead because you’ve become aware of these views that he’s had the whole time you’ve admired his sci-fi. Whatever his views he hasn’t been hoping people die. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/25 "2012-11-08T17:10:32Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > You should have read the whole thing. Here’s the beginning: > > Card is dead on target with this. Of course you’re whining and bitching about HIM, rather than being outraged about Obama’s lies and the media’s complicity in those lies. And now you’ll start whining and bitching about me, because I was crass enough to point it out instead of marching along in the liberal zombie battalions. SDMB right wing fact-free asshole endorses the lying bullshit of a right-wing nutcase author. That pretty much puts the nail in Card’s coffin right there. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/26 "2012-11-08T17:20:49Z")
This is why it is such a bad idea to listen to the politics of anyone who isn’t a respected, well-educated, experienced political commentator. Actors, musicians, athletes and writers don’t know shit - they’re just spouting their own personal opinion, and using their fame to give their opinion more weight than it deserves. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/27 "2012-11-08T17:26:31Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > This is why it is such a bad idea to listen to the politics of anyone who isn’t a respected, well-educated, experienced political commentator. Actors, musicians, athletes and writers don’t know shit - they’re just spouting their own personal opinion, and using their fame to give their opinion more weight than it deserves. I suspect I can find several well-educated, experienced political commentator that will endorse pretty much everything in OSC’s screed. Indeed, I suspect that’s where most of this stuff comes from, its not like its original to Card. Where’s Niall Ferguson hiding out this week? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/28 "2012-11-08T17:42:23Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > I’d be very surprised if there isn’t at least one author you currently like with whom you disagree on politics or other social issues. I’ve read a lot of Jerry Pournelle, bitter\* paleoconservative though he is. (In fact he is perhaps the rarest creature in America, a paleocon with a brain.) - For an idea of what I mean by bitter, see [The Prince.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkenberg%27s_Legion) (Co-authored in part by S.M. Stirling.) The story of the Helots’ rebellion on Sparta is, as Pournelle states in the foreword, a study of Maoist low-intensity conflict from the POV of the state, i.e., how to defeat it. The Helots’ _casus belli_ is that on the planet Sparta, they have no votes – Sparta having an elaborate constitution designed by political scientists, so complex that even the heir to the throne once remarks, “I’d hate to have to explain how it works,” but one feature is that citizenship must be earned, by admission to a “phratry” and militia service, among other things; it is effectively impossible for first- or second-generation immigrants, of whom there are vast numbers. Notably – and quite preposterously, in light of the real-life history of struggles for franchise expansion – the Helots do not seem to have any **actual** grievance or suffer any socioeconomic disabilities just because of their exclusion from political participation. (Their only apparent ground for resentment is that many of them lived a cushy welfare-state existence on Earth (where “citizen” means “welfare bum” and the antonym is “taxpayer”) and then got deported to a planet where they are expected to work for a living; but none of the Helots’ leaders are making any promises to do anything about that.) In any case, the Helots are portrayed as Pure Evil – their leaders are cynical and amoral and power-mad, and all their followers are dupes and brutes. In the climax, there is a massive street-battle in the capital, in which the middle-class shopkeepers join forces with the elite and slaughter the lumpenprole Helots almost to the last man. The Middle and the High united against the Low in an utterly victorious war-to-the-knife. The pages of that scene fairly drip with Pournelle’s liberated semen. Jerry Pournelle is the kind of paleoconservative who does seem to have a problem with democracy as such (and probably laments the fall of Apartheid – even, one suspects, the fall of the British Empire). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/29 "2012-11-08T17:55:54Z")
I’ve never read any of Card’s SF. Is it good? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/30 "2012-11-08T18:00:34Z")
Some of it is quite good, some of it not so much. The _Ender’s Game_ series is probably most well known, but I actually like some of his other stuff better. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/31 "2012-11-08T18:01:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’ve never read any of Card’s SF. Is it good? IMHO, he’s one of the best. ---
**Author:** ![Feyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/fbc32d/32.png) [@Feyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feyrat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/32 "2012-11-08T18:05:55Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > People take politics seriously and say a lot of stupid stuff about it. I think that’s the takeaway from all this. Except it isn’t just politics. I mean, sure, that political screed started the OP, but OSC’s been a mean, delusional jackass for a long time. And no. Once you know what his beliefs are, they’re disgustingly obvious in ALL his work, so no. It’s really not that good. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/33 "2012-11-08T18:06:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’ve never read any of Card’s SF. Is it good? Read Ender’s Game. The rest of his stuff that I’ve read runs the gammut from terrible to OK but forgettable, but nothing beyond his first book is particularly worth seeking out, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/34 "2012-11-08T18:06:42Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > This is why it is such a bad idea to listen to the politics of anyone who isn’t a respected, well-educated, experienced political commentator. Actors, musicians, athletes and writers don’t know shit - they’re just spouting their own personal opinion, and using their fame to give their opinion more weight than it deserves. QFT. Entertainers are popular because they are (usually) likable, or at least their works are popular. Actors in particular are good at projecting ideas and emotions…but they are not necessarily deep or logical thinkers. If someone hasn’t given them a script to read, then their lack of intelligence is only too apparent. And since they are adored by so many people, they tend to think that their opinions are valuable. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’ve never read any of Card’s SF. Is it good? If you haven’t read Card’s _Ender’s Game_, you should. It’s deserved its status as a classic. I think the sequels are readable, but not up to the first one. I also like the Alvin the Maker series, or at least the first two or three. He’s written some other SF, both novels and shorter works, and some of it is very good and some of it I didn’t care for at all. In some of his works, it’s quite apparent that his religion has had a big influence. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/35 "2012-11-08T18:09:01Z")
I, too, enjoyed Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and a good deal of Speaker for the Dead. The rest of his books…meh. There was one more I cannot think of I enjoyed greatly, not an Ender book… ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/36 "2012-11-08T18:11:11Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > To be fair to OSC and LDS in general, I’ve heard this argument from many people who aren’t LDS, it’s not limited to the LDS. It’s like…oh, homosexuals should not want to marry the people they are sexually attracted to. When I turn this around, and ask these people how they’d like it if they could only legally marry someone of the same sex, I get told that it’s not the same thing at all. The argument he has put forward is just pathetic, and frankly someone should slap him for it. You could as well argue for laws against inter-racial marriage using this particularly pathetic logic. “Sure, blacks can’t marry whites, but they’re still entitled to marry people of their own race, so it’s not discrimination.” I’ll confess now to being prejudiced on the grounds that I always thought Ender’s Game was a shit Heinlein/Lord of the Flies fusion. That said, I’ve read much worse Sci Fi, so never really held it against him. Then I read his whole “it’s not discriminating, gays can still marry hets” shtick and realised he really is quite stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/37 "2012-11-08T18:13:46Z")
Oh, I think that the “gays can get married too!” argument is a shitty one. I’m just saying, it’s not an argument that’s exclusive to the LDS, I’ve heard a great many people use it who aren’t LDS. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/38 "2012-11-08T18:16:39Z")
I loved his early short stories, and his early books. I recommend Ender’s Game in both short story and novel-length versions. Card did a great job of novelizing his short story, and won both the Hugo (fan) and Nebula (writers’) awards for each version. I think he deserved them! I also liked the early Alvin Maker books, even knowing that he was retelling the Joseph Smith story via an alternate history with magic. I own a cassette tape of his talk “The Secular Humanist Revival Meeting” that he used to give at Cons. What happened to that guy? His fiction went downhill as well. I saw him quite accidentally at a book signing near my house - I didn’t know he was to be at that bookstore that day, and I went in on a lark. I got a signed copy of Lovelock. Don’t bother. If you see it on a shelf, slowly back away. Now that I know he’s afraid to catch teh gay I can’t read him anymore. He was always religious, but he used to be the life of the party, and open to other ideas in his fiction. I’m afraid that guy is gone. It’s sad. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/39 "2012-11-08T18:31:41Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Oh, I think that the “gays can get married too!” argument is a shitty one. I’m just saying, it’s not an argument that’s exclusive to the LDS, I’ve heard a great many people use it who aren’t LDS. Absolutely. Because arse clenching stupidity is not specific to any particular religion. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342/40 "2012-11-08T18:35:12Z")
I still like Ender’s Game (and the sequels) and I’m planning to see the movie. Just because the guy isn’t a paragon of progressive thought doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy his work. Look at Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson–both nutty as SHIT, but I still watch their movies. They’re still good actors. The Mormon indoctrination against gays seems to be \*\*really \*\*thorough and pervasive. I’ve known plenty of Christians who changed from being \*strongly \*anti-gay to being generally accepting, but never a Mormon. I used to be friends with a Mormon and, while he was generally a nice guy and very anti-racism, he couldn’t shake off the absolute truth that gay = hell. Maybe it’s because Mormonism is so monolithic and Christianity is so diverse, I dunno. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-y-orson-scott-card/640342.md?page=3)