I had no idea, honestly. I don’t think he’s harsh in his books and I really enjoy them. I’ve read several, the Ender’s series up to Xenocide (the ones after that got weird), as well as Shadow, plus another one whose title I can’t remember right now but it was a marvelous book about a dead child. I didn’t know he was capable of this sort of mind-boggling stupidity.
I can’t do anything about the books I’ve already bought of his, but I don’t think I’ll be buying any more of his, either.
I read a lot of his stuff as a teenager. And then I started reading author’s notes, and realized that I thought he was a total tool. His fiction still entertained me, though. It’s been many years since I’ve read anything by him, but a few of his short stories (“The Porcelain Salamander” and “Unaccompanied Sonata”) still haunt me.
I had a professor in college who was a minor science fiction author. At some point I mentioned Card to him, and he went off on a rant about what an asshole Card was in person. I don’t know whether it was specific bad blood between them or whether Card really is despised among the author community (they’d met at some workshop or conference or something), but the rant was pretty fun.
Daniel
I really liked Ender’s Game the short story. I thought the book was OK. Because of name recognition, I read some other books by him. Meh. In the end, I found out the more I read of Card, the less I liked.
This is my first exposure to his Celebrity Political Pundit writing. The trend continues.
Tris
Ender’s Game is one of those books that seems like the coolest book you ever read when you read it in 9th grade but none of the endless sequels really hold up as well (Ender’s Shadow is ok, but it’s essentially the same story as the first book from a different character’s point of view).
It’s kinda funny reading his preface to the new edition (well, new many years ago). In it, he goes on and on about how he’s been criticized by education experts for his unrealistic depiction of brilliant children. Instead of responding to that by thwapping the experts upside the head and saying, “Newsflash: FICTION!” he retorts that he’s gotten a lot of letters from smart kids saying that Ender reminds them of themselves, and therefore he’s obviously got it right.
Not real convincing, Or.
Daniel
That is one thing about those books that didn’t quite ring as believable to me either. I think the kids needed to be just a little bit older. Ten year olds would be credible. Five and six year olds…not so much. That’s also one of the things that makes the book hard to adapt as a movie. You have to grow the kids up a little bit or you’ll never be able to cast it.
Lovely comment.
“My characters cringe when I come near them. I’ve seen whole avenues of imagined trees lose their leaves with terror at my approach.”–V. Nabokov
Strange article. Card may be an asshole but reading Ender’s Game as an apology for Hitler? That sounds like a stretch to me.
Me too–and the “I’m so innocent” game that Elaine appears to have played, pretending that she was addressing the book and not the author, is ridiculous. Calling someone a Hitler apologist is a mortal insult, and you can’t pretend that it’s anything else.
I’ve not read the essay, but the defense of it in the link makes it sound tinfoil-hattish. The idea that you can find these links in the footnotes of Hitler biographies really means that, if you want to find these links, you have to expand your source material dramatically. It’s pretty stupid.
I wrote a fun essay in college applying Isaiah Berlin’s “Fox and Hedgehog” political theory to Starship Troopers and Ender’s Game, arguing that the former was a hedgehog book and the latter was a fox book. I don’t know if I’d still believe it, but that’s at least a defensible position. Suggesting that some committee wrote Ender’s Game as a defense of Hitler and that Card wasn’t aware of it is borderline delusional.
No, my professor’s rant was that Orson Scott Card was an insufferable egomaniac who dripped with contempt, sneered at his peers, and refused to accept any critique, no matter how constructive, of his own work.
Daniel
(Elaine’s essay, not the linked description of it–I’ve read the description of it).
Daniel
That, plus M. Night Shyamalan ripped him off with The Sixth Sense.
Ripped off my professor? Nah–the guy had quite an ego, but he also had a sense of humor about it for the most part and was pretty easygoing. Not the sort to go in for that sort of thing.
Ripped off Orson Scott Card? Do tell.
Daniel
I wasn’t talking about the Hitler-apologia accusations (though I’ll happily agree to Kessel’s idea that Ender is a nerdish violent-revenge fantasy). I’ll have to read Sympathy for the Superman and Card’s reply before I pass judgement on that. The postscript is a different sort of story, though. I wasn’t there and don’t know much about it, but it does sound… ehr… questionable, and vaguely in line with what LHoD’s professor said. It sounds like an exaggerated response to an exaggerated provocation.
Or I could be crazy.
I can’t find a cite right now. As I said, he is a columnist for a local rag, but it’s online archives are scant. Apparently, the twist in T*he Sixth Sense *is similar to a plot point in The Lost Boys. I have not read the book, but he makes a bit of hay in the Rhino Times with charges of plagiarism. He has never pursued it beyond that, AFAIK.
Here’s a Wiki cite, FWIW.
I’ve heard the plot of every OSC book ever written summed up as “Boy Wonder Saves The World”, which is a perspective that has enough validity to completely destroy Ender’s Shadow for me. I thought the idea of writing the same book from a completely different perspective was interesting, but if every time you do it you turn your new narrator into the REAL WonderKid™ , making the last hero just some guy who was kinda bright but not really the best, that seems to be a betrayal of the original novel.
Re: M Night Shyalaman ripping off Lost Boys? It was the first thing I thought of when I saw The Sixth Sense, but realistically there’s exactly one similarity (“I see dead people”) and that’s it. Admittedly that’s the major plot point, but they diverge so far from there as to be nothing like each other. I’ll buy “inspired by”, but “ripped off” is ridiculous, and I’m not surprised OSC never tried to pursue it in the courts.
(Lost Boys is also a fucking excellent Horror/Suspense novel, BTW, and probably his best book since Ender, IMO. I keep trying to recommend it to people, but none of my friends like scary shit…)
He brayed and pissed and moaned about it where it did not matter, but is silent where it would matter. If he believes it is plagiarism he should pursue it or be quiet. IMHO.
I like scary shit but I can’t bring myself to feather his nest.
After reading that article* I can sure see your point. Which is a shame, because 90% of the time I really like him as an author
*most of that article. I had to stop after “best-run war in history”
Now that’s some scary shit.
Yeah, it sounds like a whoosh to me too… though I admit, I’m not up on his political writings or later fiction writings. But back in the 1980s, he was publicly very opposed to the sort of Moral Majority crap that the Bushistas cram down our throats, so it’s startling to think he’s done such a turnaround and has now gone to The Dark Side so thoroughly 
I had the privilege of meeting him at a few SF conventions and he does present, in person, as a thoroughly likeable, personable, well-thought-out guy. If the above isn’t a whoosh, I’ve lost a great deal of respect for him.