Orson Scott Card drinks Kool-aid

The BBQ Pit
61

Ridiculous: the later books of both the Ender and Shadow serieses all* have the plot “and then crazy political stuff happens.”

And he’s a mormon? I read the first two of his “terrible sci-fi spin-off of the Book of Mormon” series and concluded that he was obviously not Mormon, and only had vague acquantence and little respect for the scriptures of the religion.

He’s clearly a hit-and miss writer. But then, I’ve never read an author who had published more than a dozen books who wasn’t.

*except Speaker for the Dead

62

One man’s take on the move to the dark side.

Same guy redoing Card’s Secular Humanist Revival Meeting

63

Yeah, but Nabokov has compassion for his character’s weaknesses. He just won’t save them. Card seems to enjoy punishing his characters, at least those who aren’t as perfect as Ender.

64

It really is hard to reconcile the author of the Ender books with the author of Card’s political rants. I mean, some of his political essays wouldn’t sound odd coming out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth. Yet his fiction has an entirely different tone. I dunno…his fiction has a recurring theme of bloggers who take on fictional personas to advance certain positions in order to discredit them…but this motivation doesn’t seem likely in the case of OSC’s real-life rants.

I don’t know, it’s just odd.

65

I had forgotten his claim about how The Sixth Sense was plagiarized from Card’s book Lost Boys. He was talking about how the Matrix guys were being sued by a woman who said they stole the plot from her, and started ranting about how he knows what it’s like because the same thing happened to him, by golly.

I actually really liked Lost Boys when I read it as a kid (and even more when I read the short story he based it on, in which HE was the main character, causing me to think it was a true story for years until the book came out), and still do for the most part, although now it seems a bit smug.

His claim is just insane. The only similarity is that there’s a kid and some dead kids. The purpose of the being-able-to-see-dead-people, the basic plot of a programmer having to move across the country and take a day job to support his family, the timeframe (the book takes place in the early 80’s, right around the time that IBM released the original PC), the characters being a nuclear family instead of a psychiatrist, the centrality of Mormonism to the book, the serial killer in the book, the twist at the end of the movie … there aren’t any other similarities. When I read his claim that it was stolen from his book, I actually laughed out loud.

Sadly, it seems like OSC’s critical thinking faculties have declined in recent years.

66

I’ve only read Pastwatch The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, and if I hadn’t known that Card was a Mormon before reading it, I would have quickly figured it out by the events in the book. Not a bad read, but certainly not great. Still, based on his quoted comments in this thread, if he decides to pack up and move to Jonestown, I’m not going to shed a tear.

67

The Homecoming series was a rewriting of much of the Book of Mormon in a Science Fiction setting. I liked some of it and didn’t like some of it. I think the thing that put me off the most is what keeps me away from modern SciFi–there’s to much fantasy involved in it. I’m not a big fan of the fantasy genre.

68

I forgot about the Alvin Maker series. That’s obviously fantasy and I like the premise: what if traditional magic were actually real and how would that have affected history? Again, I like some of it and don’t like some of it.

69

I once heard Card speak at a convention panel on “Religion in Science Fiction,” in which he stated his belief that there are no true atheists, and that anyone who professes not to believe in God is lying on some level. He may have had more to say on the subject, but at that point his body inflated so much that I was forced out of the room.

Admittedly, as one of the relatively few people who thought **Ender’s Game ** was dumber than a bag of hammers, I wasn’t terribly disillusioned by the revelation that the book’s author is apparently a colossal dick. I have to admit though, it’s mildly amusing to learn that he thinks the Iraq invasion is going swimmingly. Persons who extol Bush’s “careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies” really shouldn’t be accusing others of religious self-delusion.

70

For some reason, Ender’s Game comes across as the Catcher in the Rye of SF to me. I read it, it’s OK, but it’s not that great. I’ll take Le Guin over Card for my YA stuff any day.

71

I’ve read a lot of Card’s early stuff, and some of his later stuff. You can tell roughly when he started going over to the dark side - it’s about when he made so much money that he bought his editors rather than worked with them. (Call it the Stephen King Syndrome.) I loved his older stuff, but anything after about, oh, say, Xenocide is damaged goods.

Now there’s a book that really pissed me off. I keep meaning to do a CS or a Pit thread about it. Hate hate hate that book.

72

This just reinforces my opinion that you’re much better off not knowing much about the people who make art you appreciate. I try to ignore the private lives of authors, actors, musicians, sculptors, painters, whoever. I’ve found that authors whose fiction I like often have non-fiction writing that makes me cringe. What I’ve been made aware of regarding Card’s views and politics has seriously undermined my opinion of his other writing.

I read the “Creating the Innocent Killer” essay and the Kuro5hin piece. I’ve got to say that I think pretty much everyone is trying to read way too much into the story. I fundamentally disagree with the extreme pacifism displayed in the “Innocent Killer” piece, though it is well-written. The apologia for Hitler idea is just ludicrous, and I would also be pretty darn upset if someone accused me of that, so I don’t blame Card for getting pissy about it. Basically saying that Card didn’t write the story is just way over the top. Everything in “Ender’s Game” is consistent with Card’s style and themes. I have no doubt that the events in that piece are filtered more than a little.

That said, I also don’t doubt Card can be a royal jerk. I’ve read his anti-gay piece and some other articles of his. Friggin’ weird how diametrically opposed his writer vs. real-life persona is, but if the non-fiction is representative at all, I wouldn’t want to exchange more than pleasantries with the man.

BTW, those essays made me remember why I didn’t pursue a higher literature degree; Lit Crit is a bunch of bullshit most of the time. They throw out all kinds of kooky ideas and support them on threads of logic that make spiderwebs look like girders. And then they start with the personal attacks. Damn, am I glad I don’t have a responsibility to argue with people like them anymore.

73

More bad news DtC, is that Card is a supporter of many of the dumbass Intelligent Design critiques of evolution (though, oddly, not a supporter of ID per se). Like Michael Crichton, he thinks that he knows science better than scientists, and that they are all blinded to the obvious arguments he has against mainstream biology.

74

Please do so; I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.

75

Hmmm. Should I Pit the book or CS it? Should I re-read it? It’s been about a year since I first read it, so I’m bound to get at least the names wrong. I don’t want to go back and re-read it. (I threw the book across the room when I finished it. It’s dead to me now. :))

I will meditate upon this dilemma.

76

I find it hard to recognize the man in this thread. I met Card at a Science Fiction Film Festival in Salt Lake many years ago (He and the local newspaper critic were commenting on the films), and he seemed a nice guy. He overheard me reading one of my stories to someone else there and critiqued it for me. I had no idea who he was at the time.

The only thing I’d read by him at the time was his Saintspeak Dictionary, which is a hoot. I’ve tried to read his fiction since, but simply cannot get into it, although I thought he did a wonderful job on the Abyss.

77

Go ahead and pit it. I want to feel the full force of your … uh … feelings. :wink:

78

I didn’t like Ender’s Game, have never read anything else by Card, and I’ve known he was loony for years.

Of course, some of my distaste for him isn’t his fault. The guy who loaned me a copy of Ender’s Game ended up being a stalker, and that’s probably not Card’s fault. Probably.

79

For some bizarre reason I woke up this morning remembering that Ezra Pound was a reasonably prominent propagandist for Mussolini.

Card is a shadow of Pound’s shadow, but… that may be parallel too.

I’m not sure. I’m still a little groggy. But I think there’s something to be said about it.

80

Just hold on.

The contention that “Ender’s Game” is intended as an apologia for Hitler and the Holocaust is just fucking stupid. It just is.

How many kids will read “Ender’s Game”, then a few years later “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and therefore think to themselves, “Well, maybe that Hitler guy was just misunderstood. Y’know, like Ender, he was just doing what he though he had to. So…maybe Nazism isn’t so bad!”

That would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happen. It’s just stupid on so many levels.

YES, “Ender’s Game” is about war, and responsibility, and innocence, and genocide/xenocide. And World War II had war, and genocide, and innocent victims. Yeah to all that. But does reading “Ender’s Game” really make people sympathize with Hitler? No fucking way, except possibly a sense of compassion for Hitler as a parallel to the kid that Ender had to cap in the shower…Bonzo, was it? Ender didn’t want to fight him, but thought he had to, and what’s his name ended up dead, just like Hitler, because Ender fought for his life. And so did the Buggers. Or maybe Peter is Hitler, since he’s clearly a monster in “Ender’s Game” but is rehabilitated in the end.

If “Ender’s Game” is fascist propaganda, it is surely the most ass-backward fascist apologia I’ve ever seen. A book that explores what it means to forgive your enemy even if you have to fight him? That says the only way to defeat an enemy is to know him so completely that you are compelled to love him? Maybe this book argues that we should forgive Hitler, but it surely doesn’t argue that Hitler was right…because Hitler didn’t think people should love their enemies, he thought they should hate their enemies, crush them, and drink their blood, revel in hate and destruction.

There ARE fascist apologies in science fiction. Books that argue that enemies are totally evil and can be exterminated without a second thought, that average people are nothing and their lives can be brushed aside by the ubermenschen, that war and violence and hatred are the highest expressions of human emotion, that science and art and kindness are sentimental weaknesses, that good guys can and should kill faceless enemies with a clean conscience. You’ve all read books like this, seen movies like this. THOSE are pro-fascist books, pro-fascist movies.

“Ender’s Game” is just the opposite.