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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works

Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.

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You are here:  Home  »  Authors  »  Individual  »  Orson Scott Card ( = this page)

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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.

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Other Orson Scott Card Resources

Orson Scott Card Resources on the Web

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 .

• Card’s personal beliefs, a portion of his Wikipedia page
• A Primer on Orson Scott Card and the Ender’s Game Controversy by Anna Silman at the New York site [a reasonably dispassionate overview]
• Orson Scott Card: Mentor, Friend, Bigot by Rachel Edidin at Wired [a personal account]
• “My favorite author, my worst interview” by Donna Minkowitz at Salon [another personal account]
• Card’s call for literal revolution [archived copy] (see especially the last three paragraphs)
• Orson Scott Card Outdoes Himself With Insane, Racist Rant by Alana Horowitz at the Huffpost site
• Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card compares Obama to Hitler by Ben Child at The Guardian
• Orson Scott Card’s long history of homophobia by Aja Romano in Salon
• “Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality” [archived copy] by John Kessel’ [this one caused quite a stir]
• “ender and hitler: sympathy for the superman (20 years later)” by Elaine Radford
• “Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat” by Roger Williams (with extensive back-and-forth correspondence following it)

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.

For more—and there is a very, very great deal more—on Card, Google Is Your Friend.

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Orson Scott Card Resources in Print

I could find none.

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Notable Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books by Orson Scott Card **

• Hart’s Hope
• The Alvin Books:
  • Seventh Son
  • Red Prophet
  • Prentice Alvin
  • Alvin Journeyman
  • # Heartfire
  • # The Crystal City
  • # Master Alvin [supposedly forthcoming, but it’s been a loooong time now…]

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