Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)
Search term(s):
Welcome to the Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works web site!
You have apparently come to this page from a link on a search engine or another site. If this is your first visit here, I much recommend that you take a few minutes to look over the introductory material accessible via the red “Introductory” zone of the Site Menu available from the “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this (and every) page. An understanding of the purposes and principles of organization of this site will, I hope and believe, much augment your experience here, for this page and in general. You can simply click this link to get at the site front page, which, unsurprisingly, is the best place to start. Thank you for visiting.
This is a brief discussion of Orson Scott Card and, of course, of some speculative-fiction books by Card.
This discussion and list does not necessarily include every book by Card: it includes only those books that I both know and like. Just as with the author list itself, omission of a particular item may mean I didn’t think highly enough of the omitted item, or it may simply mean that I have not yet sufficient familiarity with it. (In a very few cases, I have listed some books merely on the strength of my opinion of the author: all such books are clearly marked below, as throughout these lists, with a hash mark (#) before the title so you know what’s what.)
I don’t pretend that this discussion is a deep analysis. My intent is no more than to give you a rough idea of what kinds of tales Card tells, how those tales are usually told, and what makes them and Card worthy; in sum, to help you rank Orson Scott Card (and the works by Card listed here) on your personal literary “to do” list.
A Few Words About Orson Scott Card
Regrettably, I have not yet had an opportunity to write an essay on this author, but the “Other Resources” section below will lead you to some information about the “Notable Books” listed farther down this page.
Card has his own web site, Hatrack River; he also publishes an ezine called The Intergalactic Medicine Show. (There is also an opinion column not related to speculative fiction, and so not included here.) Besides those, there is a fan wiki site.
Of individual pages, there are not so many that are not focussed on Card the person rather than Card the author (see the paragraph below); one of the more useful is Orson Scott Card at Henry Jenkins’s “Media and Imagination” site. And the ever-useful Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has its Card, Orson Scott page.
Card represents an archetype of the classic controversy over the extent to which one can separate the product from its creator. Many of Card’s books have achieved much popularity and critical acclaim, but Card himself has achieved much notoriety and acid hatred because of his very well-known and often expressed profound homophobia. To the best of my knowledge, no one expresses sympathy with or support of Card’s views, but not a few take the position that the author’s beliefs, if they do not control his works, are immaterial. There are no easy answers there; but it may be noted that Ender’s Game probably his best-known and best-selling book (of which a major movie was made), can be criticized on grounds other than Card’s homophobia (which does not seem to appear in the book), to wit that it accepts and even glorifies viloence and genocide.
So that you may see some of the material out there on the web on these matters, here is a short but representative list .
As I noted above, homophobia is not the only aspect of Card’s personal views that has aroused antipathy. It is my feeling that when a writer has very deeply held beliefs, and especially beliefs based on his or her religion, then it becomes impossible to separate the artist from the art. Consider whether the works of—to cite just a few almost at random—G. K. Chesterton, Gene Wolfe, R. A. Lafferty, J. R. R. Tolkien, or C. S. Lewis would have been possible absent such beliefs.
Card’s views have not affected my choice of books listed below; I just find his fantasy more literate and interesting than his science fiction.
This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.
Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend—click the link to learn more. (To get 20% off on hosting fees if you move to Pair, use code pairref-FyXypEEk)
(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).
This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium)
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol
v1.0 (Transitional)
and the W3C Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Protocol
v3 — because
we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!
This page was last modified on Wednesday, 29 November 2023, at 11:05 pm Pacific Time.
) in the upper right of this page.
