[growling]
Oh, heck. I’m gonna say it in public.
[growling some more]
“Alvin books make Ducky growl.”
[growling gets louder]
[slinks out of thread, still growling]
[sub]growl[/sub]
That’s a good recommendation. He also has written another book for writers called Characters and Viewpoint, which is part of a Writer’s Digest series of books. Excellent read, and just filled with good advice. I highly recommend it for anyone who is into writing. You can see some of his methodology in this book, and it definitely gives a hint as to how he writes with his distinctive style.
As for the movie version of Ender’s Game, believe or not, I would rather not see that book made into a movie. I just don’t think it can be done successfully. As Enderw24 mentioned earlier, the movie would require a lot of very good child actors, and actors that age of excellent caliber are rare. Currently I can only think of one young actor that is capable of pulling off the role of Ender Wiggin, and that’s Haley Joel Osment. And Osment is almost too old for the part of Ender, unless they set it in the later time of Battle School, and make the character of Ender a little older.
And who would you find for Bean? Peter? Crazy Tom? Bonzo? It’s an impossible casting call, and I think that if a movie version of a book can’t be done successfully, then it shouldn’t be attempted at all.
Besides, the book has some nasty scenes in it, stuff that I can’t imagine would survive into a movie that is primarily acted by children.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Ender quartet, even the fourth one, which I’ve seen given some hard knocks by Card fans. I also liked the Alvin Maker series, although the last two books were definitely showing some lagging in story development. But Red Prophet is such a good story that I’ve read it more often than any other book in that series.
The Homecoming series was enjoyable. I’m not Mormon, so I completely missed any parallels between Mormon history and the storylines in that series, but I’ve heard that there were many such parallels.
Treason, one of his early and lesser known novels, is worth reading.
So is Songmaster. When I read it for the first time, I was in the middle of writing a short story that dealt with a character that had the ability to manipulate the emotions of others through song. When I read the novel, I thought, “Crap! Card beat me to it!”, but I finished the story anyway as an exercise, even though I knew it could never be published.
The Worthing Saga definitely has some strong points, although I see some parallels between this and the Homecoming series.
Wyrms bored me. I’ve only read it once.
I’ve also only read Hart’s Hope once. It was a long time ago, and I remember being quite puzzled by it.
Pastwatch was great, but it wasn’t as captivating as some of his other works. It read almost like wish fulfillment, as if the actual history was too painful to let stand, and “here’s my authorial proposal to heal it.”
Homebody was interesting, but it didn’t grab me in the way a lot of his other books did. Same thing for Enchantment and Lost Boys.
His short story collections are varied in quality. The paperback collected titled Monkey Sonatas has some of his strangest stuff, and the book titled The Changed Man is my favorite short story collection among the bunch.
Oh, since no one has mentioned it, here’s a link to Orson Scott Card’s official website.
[sub]Can you tell I’ve read a lot of this guy’s stuff?[/sub]
The first thing of his I read was The Saintspeak Dictionary. It’s a funny and slightly cynical book about Mormon culture, written in the style of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. It’s wonderful, and along with Pat Baglety’s and Calvin Grondahl’s books of cartoons, the best real introduction to Mormon culture. I’d never heard of Orson Scott Card before this.
I hate to admit this, but, although I own several of his books, I’ve never been able to get into his fiction (he wrote a historical novel called Saints! about Mormon pioneers).
They used to run a science fiction film festival at Hansen Planetarium in downtown Salt Lake. Card and the movie critic from the Salt Lake Trib (whose name my treacherous memory refuses to divulge) gave the introductions and commentary. Those were worth going to.
At one of these, I was upstairs in the planetarium library reading aloud the stories our writing group had written, when Card came up, interested. He took my story and critiqued it in red pen.
I’ve read the first 4 Ender books, First 2 Alvin Maker books, and Lost Boys.
Ender’s Game is a masterpiece of the genre IMO.
The other 3 were very good, I thought. They really wandered around relative to each other, but they were each very interesting on their own.
Alvin Maker is a masterpiece of Fantastic Literature. The second one was good, I thought, but was odd.
I remember reading Lost Boys on a plane to Florida 2 years ago and wondering when it would end. It seemed to be an endless parade of crazy characters introduced for the sake of showing their craziness. I kept wondering “what is this book about?” The resolution, I thought, was excellent, but could have been achieved without so much in-between.
When I saw “The Sixth Sense” I thought: “This Guy must have read Lost Boys.”
Oh, and by the way, I own “Pastwatch” but haven’t read it yet. I am looking forward to it.
[LoneVoiceOfDissent]After having it recommended to me for many years, I finally read “Ender’s Game” two years ago, and I must admit I felt thoroughly let down. Maybe it was just oversold to me and I was expecting more, but I didn’t feel it met the hype at all. I enjoyed Ender’s interaction with the other students at the Battle School, and with his superiors there, but the rest of the book just didn’t grab me. The whole deal with Peter and Valentine seemed especially contrived to me, and having Ender’s drills be the actual battle just really sucked. I understand that it continued the theme of Ender’s manipulation at the hands of adults, but I really felt at the time like it was a case of, “I have no idea how to end this book.”
Maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea.[/LoneVoiceOfDissent]
I’ve only read a couple of Card books but I definitely like him. The theme of searching for meaning in life is easily detectable, that is for certain.
Speaker for the Dead. Only one of the Ender series I’ve read, and the first Card I ever read. It made an impression on me, but only as a good story, really Ender trying to redeem himself through redeeming others but then ultimately redeeming himself through undoing his own actions.
Pastwatch. I just finished this one off a couple of days ago. Another good story, especially since he picked up on a couple theories of social development (cultural advance based on a foundation of slavery, partially explaining the rise and fall of civilizations by the adaptation and improvement of other civilizations’ technologies) that are actually fairly Marxist. I think the way he wound the story up was a little weak because it totally ignored the fact that both societies were still class-based, but that’s just my own lefty opinion.
Folk of the Fringe. Read this one after Pastwatch. OK overall, a collection of loosely-connected short stories about a Mormon country setting itself up in Utah after a vague disaster leads to the collapse of the United States. What about the rest of the world, though? Do they just keep on truckin’? He made it sound like the US got shit on without doing much of anything else in return. Very strange, and a tad preachy for my tastes.
pldennison…whimper…I…I…I don’t know what to say to this. I feel so…impotent.
Am I still your cup of tea?
Clairobscur, I think that story was called “Unaccompanied Sonata”. I read it in an Omni magazine from 1981 or so.
I have always thaought of Card as a short story writer – rather greusome stories, too. All of the short stories discussed so far have been excellent examples, but I also recall in particar one about a parapalegic girl – I think it was called “Clap Hands and Sing” or something like that. It was a disturbing love story.
In the preface to “The Complete Short Stories of Orson Scott Card” is an essay he wrote about the concept of “horror” stories. He divided fear into three categories: dread, terror, and horror. Dread is the the fear that comes before something happens, terror the fear during, and horror is the fear (and disgust) that comes out of a lingering situation. He opined that horror was the weakest of the three emotions on which to base a story, and stated that when he set out to write a story that might fall into the ‘horror/sf’ genre, he set out to make it a story about dread. That being the strongest fear, since it is full of suspense and expectation of the worst. That essay has colored my critical reading of horror stories ever since.
It couldn’t be so, since it was at first a short story (in which the end is obviously the point)
I didn’t say it was, I said it felt like. Almost like a shaggy dog story.
Enderw, we can still be friends. 
More hits than misses for me. While not every Card book is a winner, the thing I really like about the favorites is that there’s a “strong emotional note” in each book, a moment of spiritual uplifting that arises from the characters and their situation and the plot. It’s like an epithamy, that just smacks me between the eyes and leaves me breathless.
Still, as others have noted, he’s bad with longer series. And while the repeated focus on Portuguese and Esperanto is cute, after a while it tends to be a bit overused.
Like a lot of others here, I liked Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Ender’s Shadow, and that first Alvin book (never had the chance to read the others).
On the other hand, I really didn’t like Xenocide, or the Earthfall (?does memory fail me on this name?) series.
What’s the deal with the Christopher Columbus book? Is that fiction or non-fiction? Anyone recommend it/not recommend it? I really hate Columbus, if that will affect whether I should read the book.
It’s fiction. Basically, it’s a great deal about the life of Christopher Columbus, but with an alternate reality twist. What if time “viewers” interfered with the way history was to try to improve it? That’s what the book is about. It is, IMHO, much better than things Turtledove does, if you’re familiar with his work. Probably one of the best books he’s written and I would definitely recommend it.
Although I am finally reading the Ender series, and enjoying it (I’m reading other authors between each book so I don’t burn out on Card), I agree that Card seems to have a weakness when it comes to series. I didn’t like either the Alvin or the Homecoming series.
I discovered Card in Omni, with his short story Unaccompanied Sonata, a truly great piece of writing. The books Songmaster and Treason (sometimes called A Planet Named Treason), are my favorites by him, and his collected short stories are always good to read.
I often bridle at authors that are too obvious with a religious conviction, but I do like the sense of spirituality that imbues much of Card’s work. If his purpose is to find converts to Mormanism, (perhaps by inciting some curiosity about the faith via the hints in his writing), he is gentle enough, even in the book set in contemporary America where the family is Morman (Lost Boys?), that he does not lose this reader who reacts negatively to that stuff. I don’t think he is trying to convert, it feels more like these beliefs are so rooted in his day to day life, that they must be reflected in his writing.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The only thing of Card I’ve read is the Ender Series and the beginings of the Bean Series. One of the things that disapointed me was that we never really see things in the viewpoints of Ender’s parents. What is it like to have three genius children? One of them destroying an entire race, and another taking over the world? We get some of the mother’s thoughts in Shadow of the Hegemon, which I felt was my favorite parts. I also liked when Peter told his parents that he was Locke and they said, “We know. And we’re as proud of you as we ever have been with Ender,” and Peter cries.
I would have also liked to see Bean with his new family, the Delephikis, more. Maybe we will in the next book in the Bean series.
Treason and A Planet Named Treason are not identical. Treason is a slightly edited and shorter version of the latter which was released first–later, the first version was published. Both are quality reads–it’s been years since I read either,but I remember them being mostly the same story, the main difference being more details in the unedited version.
Treason and Ender’s Game are my favorite Card stories… BTW, we actually read Ender’s Game in my 8th grade English class years ago…
The Card story mentioned by Drastic is “Kingsmeat” (I think.)
I think that Card’s short stories are more effective than his novels. “A Thousand Deaths” is a personal favourite.
By the way, wasn’t Card involved in James Cameron’s movie “The Abyss”? Or did I just dream this?
Yes, he wrote the novelization of the Abyss. I haven’t read it yet. It’s the only novelization that he’s done and was done almost as a favor to Cameron, I believe. He was allowed free reign of it and added about three introductory chapters which set up the characters’ history. The actors read those chapters to better understand their parts and the history behind them before filming the movie.
I’m thinking that I haven’t read anything by Card in a long time. January was the last one, with Shadow of the Hegemon, and before that it has been quite awhile. Probably because the series he’s working on now, women of the bible, doesn’t interest me as much. The story still seems quite interesting, I’ve read the first few chapters, but I don’t think I’m going to go out and buy them just now. Perhaps I’ll pick them up at a later point.
I also have to agree with Manda JO. I’ve been following the Alvin Maker series (we even named our bread maker Alvin, just to be weird). I seriously don’t think it’s going where he intended it to go–if he ever had a clear idea of how it was going to turn out. I’m not sure if he can salvage this one.
The Homecoming series was essentially a re-telling of the first part of the Book of Mormon. I did read the first half of the first book, but wasn’t very interested. I don’t know if I’ll ever read the rest of the series. (I think my brother liked it, though).
Alvin is based on Joseph Smith. There are a lot of scenes(like the leg operation in the first book) that are taken from things that happened to Joseph Smith (but of course there are a lot of things that aren’t based on him, too! There are couple of little points that make more sense if you know the Mormon theology behind it (not necessary to understand or enjoy the story, but just kind of an added bonus). For example, the Unmaker keeps using water to try to hurt Alvin–Joseph Smith was told in a revelation that Satan has control over the waters (one reason why missionaries aren’t supposed to go swimming while on their missions–though I served in Korea and our elders did plenty of splashing around in the public bath houses). There’s also the scene in the third book (or the first one?) where Revered Thrower goes to touch the hand of the angel that’s been appearing to him, and there’s nothing there. He thinks, “Ah, he’s showing me that he’s pure spirit” (or something to that effect–it’s been a while since I read that one). But if you’re LDS, the bells go off in your head–“Warning! Warning! Evil spirit!” (Look here for the section in the Doctrine and Conventants about shaking hands with angels).
It seems like there was something in the later Ender books that struck me as particularly Mormonish, but I forget what it was…
Anyway! I liked Pastwatch a lot–though I wanted to know if the alternate history really did turn out better, in the end. (I suppose that would have been a much longer story, though!)
Like most others in this thread, for me he’s very much hit and miss. However the hits were so good that I’ll invariably read just about anything he writes, because you never know if it’s going to be one of the good ones.
The original Ender’s Game is still one of my all-time favorites, and Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide rank right up there. Children of the Mind was OK, but frankly a disappointment after the other books in the series. I’m tempted to say Speaker was my favorite of the bunch, but there’s so much difference between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead that I don’t know that it’s a fair comparison.
The “Shadow” books have been good if not yet great. I liked seeing things from Bean’s viewpoint, and learning more about Petra (who was one of my favorite characters from Ender’s Game). I don’t think the series has done justice to Peter yet, who aside from Ender himself is the most intriguing character in the whole thing (IMHO).
Pastwatch was great. The Alvin Maker books have been mostly good, although the last one (can’t recall the title) was definitely weaker than the others. I enjoyed Worthing Saga and Folk of the Fringe too.
On the other hand I really didn’t care for Wyrms or Songmaster. In particular I read Wyrms after reading Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, and it really felt like he was just fleshing out some ideas rather than telling a story that could stand on its own.