I really didn't do any research on the guy until this week. Apparently he's super-uber TBM. To those who have read his works, does he often impose his devout-LDS faith into his writing? Regardless of his Mormon delusions and vocal homophobia, I'm excited for the class. He's clearly a respected writer.

Ted.

Guh. There's so many better writers! OSC stresses me out. He always has to nag and lecture, especially in his latest books, about marriage and babies. Heterosexual marriage and babies. It's a wonder his characters don't look up at the reader and ask, Why are you reading this book when you could get married and have babies?

In fact, I didn't even know much about Mormonism, but he doesn't realise how much Saints makes Joseph Smith look like a womanizing jerk? Also, who converts that fast? The dude who converted that family was based on an actual person. Someone comes up in my house and explodes like that, I am NOT going to join their religion.

I hate how he writes women. He makes them shrill and stereotypical, and there's very few strong female characters he has. Maybe Peggy in Seventh Son. Novinhua was an affliction of a woman.

He's terrible at character development. His idea of diversity is using as many racial stereotypes as possible. Like with Xenocide. It's supposed to be 3000 years in the future from when Ender's Game was written. So why does everyone live on these segregated worlds? Would Chinese people REALLY decide to live like ancient Chinese people 3000 years into the future? REALLY? It's a wonder they weren't footbinding still! And all the Japanese people were stereotypical too and refused to eat cooked fish. And the Samoan people were just caricatures too.

And don't get me started on what he does to his few gay characters. I tried giving this guy a chance so many times, but it's unforgivable to put a gay character in your story who rants about how women and men are alien opposite creatures but the meaning of life is to marry one and have babies even if you're GAY! If he had any sense of reality, he'd know that doesn't work out that well! In Songmaster some poor gay dude gets his penis cut off for trying to have sex with a 15 year old boy. Who looks 12.

Gay men don't work that way! I reread that book some time ago this year and it was amazing how warped it was and how I didn't notice the first time I read it. Ugh. That guy frustrates me. I'm going to be a writer, have gay characters and characters of different races and such and write so much better than him.

Obviously I'm not writing well now. It's 6 am.

And worse of all. The thing that broke the straw on this camel's back... His ableism! His books can be PAINFULLY ableism. I reread Folk of the Fringe and also Speaker of the Dead and cringed at how he portrayed these disabled men. I wanted to take Carpenter out of Folk of the Fringe and put him in a book where he didn't have to spend so much time thinking he was useless and broken just because he had Cerebral Palsy. That guy was an awesome character who helped find a system of growing food that saved so many people but he had to feel like a WORM! You are not a worm just because you can't walk. You're a whole person even in a wheelchair. Goddess's tits, what is WRONG with OSC? he stresses me out so much.

It was a bad idea to reread his books because the subtext, the homophobia and sexism, the ableism, and telling and not showing.

Better off reading Neil Gaiman.

I have read three of his books.

The guy needs to learn how to write dialogue.

Aside from that, no, he doesn' push his morg beliefs. But, his stories are really aimed at the 12-15 year old male demographic. They are too simple to be appreciated by anyone else.

Don't get me started on his dialogue. All of that irritating witty banter by characters who think they're so much smarter than everyone else. And all the silly manipulating they do rather than just tell what they know.

For example, I really loved Lost Boys until I read it too many times. That book is dripping with Mormonism. Do Mormons really get their garments in a knot over innocent swear words? Words you can find in the bible that are not even a huge deal? And in this book everyone was terrible except for OSC's family. (because they're the characters in the book.) Like there was a Mormon family, but the mother just let her kids run amok and, worse of all DID NOT PUT THEM IN SEATBELTS! Then she spouted out some silly nonsense about God and freewill and enjoying life. I was like, woman, that is stupid. No one wants to deal with your destructive kids and if you are going to have that many kids get a bigger car and strap them down! It's a matter of life and death! gaaaaaaaaah!

This book should have been in the perspective of one of OSC's children instead of being about the parents, Mormonism, how everyone in the entire town was awful except them. But worse of all, it's one of those plots that can easily be resolved with the right questions!

These plots make my head explode. Take in Speaker of the Dead for example. This is a spoiler, but how hard is it to tell a bunch of aliens bent on cutting you up that you can't turn into a tree? Once I thought of this, the story completely falls apart. He doesn't think things like that through!

Before you do this, be sure to read his book- A Storyteller in Zion.

My brother was one of Orson Scott Card's missionary companions (Brazil around 1972-ish). He thought he was a good guy but a little unusual - no further details given.

I really enjoyed Ender's Game, but that's it. I tried a few others, and they just didn't work for me.

As a published author of note, he has something to teach you. If nothing else he can teach you how to structure a story or a novel.

I... Would do the opposite of what he teaches. It's depressing to me because at one point in time he could write a good book. The first book I read by him was Seventh Son and it was and still is brilliant. There's an atheist character who still portrayed as a good person even if he's skeptic, but he's afraid of water for some weird reason even though he's a miller. His characters tend to be too black and white. And good characters are good no matter what they do, even if they manipulate and kill an entire species, they still get to be the good guys. And usually to him characters are bad because they don't agree with the good guys. It's so irritating.

One story I read by him was very powerful and involved a person who had been isolated to keep them from listening to music. What happened to the guy who can write stuff like that? Now it's all nagging, lecturing, homophobia, weak female characters. Ugh. What a let down. He has so much potential. Just what happened?

I end up preferring to read Laurell K Hamilton instead and she can get quite bad, but at least she doesn't make me physically sick with subtext. Though I won't read any more of her Anita books.

I've only read Ender's Game, and like I imagine with most of his books, there is definitely some kind of religious subtext. Their is even a few direct reference's to Ender's mother being a mormon and giving him a blessing or something.From what people have told me who have read his other books, Ender's game is supposed to be the best of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2014 11:16AM by midwestanon.

I liked that book so much until I noticed the creepy as all hell message behind it.

Also Ender is such a Gary Stu character. Only the bad people hate him and the good people love him.

And how the hell can you tell if someone is going to be a psychopath when they're 3 years old? Let alone if they're going to make a good leader. It's frustrating to read a book, think about it too much and see how it doesn't work. I hope when I become a writer I don't do things like this, but it stresses me out because I don't want to be a terrible writer!

Ugh, yeah he wrote some well written stuff back in the day, but even then it had some really twisted undertones.
I read Wyrms, Songmaster, and Lost Boys a little too early, like 12. Well written, disturbing as hell.

Nobody ever talks about Wyrms... I think it is misogynistic rape fantasy at its finest, but at 12 I sure didn't have thoughts enough to express this. It was sick in a really weird way, and left me thinking this is what men think of women. Not good for anything but breeding, easily allured and hypnotized into wanting what isn't good for them, and turned on by pain and violation. Also that men are turned on at the thought of luring in, hurting and violating women in the most indescribable ways.
Don't let your 12 year old read this book unsupervised or ever, is what I'm trying to say.
I wound up in a bad relationship at 16, and since I had no healthy examples in real life to model, and an equal mix of really fucked up literature and impossibly perfect fantasy literature to draw imaginary examples from, I didn't know any better.

What does it say about him that the only sexy sex scene he's ever done (Well, it's not sexy, it's actually REALLY SCARY AND CREEPY) is between a amorphous blob and an UNDERAGED GIRL! I feel like he has issues. Songmaster was dripping with them. I was like, maybe I should not read him anymore. It's bad for my health. Literally. I just don't enjoy his books either. There's better stuff out there. I'd rather read Stephanie Meyers. She's Mormon, but she can write without nagging the reader about how she thinks everyone should be.

I finally read Ender's Game (well, about 3/4 of it) a few months ago, I had been interested in reading it ever since I tutored a very nice, very bright teenage boy in English about six years ago. (His parents are Chinese immigrants who had hired me to help improve his English writing skills.) This kid absolutely adored OSC's books, especially Ender's Game. I even bought this boy a book OSC had written about how to write fiction when I was no longer tutoring him.

When I finally got around to reading Ender's Game recently, I found the first quarter or so very clever and compelling...a little more than halfway through it, though, I just couldn't follow the long, detailed (repetitive?) descriptions of the kids' fighting formations anymore. I can see where a pre-teen or teenaged boy who's really into video games, etc. though would like that stuff. I don't mean that in a patronizing way; I mean that I simply don't have the type of brain that can follow every minute detail of battle formations.

Because of what I've learned on RFM, I also kept an eye out as I read the book for any evidence of OSC's Mormonism, but I didn't see much of that...then again, as a NeverMo I probably missed some stuff.

I skipped ahead to the ending and found it clever, but I still can't see what all the fuss is about that book. Too much repetition and boring dialogue to make it brilliant, in my opinion.

Based on what others here are saying about the sexism, homophobia, etc. in OSC's later books, I think I'll be skipping those.

What Chromesthesia said above...

I met Card thirty-odd years ago while taking an undergrad class in science fiction (and although it was unintentional, it was brutal on SF as literature, even though the professor was a fan. I don't think she taught the class again).

Card struck me as arrogant and defensive back then, and he's only deteriorated.

As for Summer's comment that he could teach one how to structure a novel, I wasn't aware there are any codified schools of criticism on that one. Personally, I think the BOM was his original model for what constitutes a novel, and we all know my opinion of that work (see Twain, Mark).

I gave him a second shot a few months ago since my daughter's English class had "Ender's Game" on their reading list. No thank you; like the BOM, I couldn't finish it...

Card's banality asserted itself in the introduction when he characterized Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series as essentially a loose retelling of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire."

The guy's light is pretty dim.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2014 12:37PM by SL Cabbie.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
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>
>
> Card struck me as arrogant and defensive back
> then,

I met him during this period too and at, I assume, the same English department. I didn't know him; he was registered in a graduate seminar I was in, but he didn't spend much time in the seminar -- he must have dropped it or something of the like.

Anyway, I came away with the same impression as my Cabbie friend here.

I have never read his books (I do very little actual book reading anymore...short attention span as I enter full geezerdom) and my try to watch his movie "Enders Game" but will record it so fast forwarding is an option and I don't waste 2 hours of my life I can never reclaim. Anyone care to weigh in on the movie? Does it hold up as good sci-fi or is it a waste of time?

Ron Burr

The movie is good. The best part is the ending. Some of the scenes where Ender is in training with the other kids are unnecessarily violent. I would fast-forward through those.

That movie... was meh. I liked using Viola Davis in the movie, that was good, but it just wasn't that good.

I did think the buggers were adorable though. That queen was so cute. She had these big buggy eyes. I'm a weirdo who thinks things like this https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRPU8Ip7wGdFqS5fOOnV-xR6r9AQW4PSYi4cUFmrdX-XZpxE8EFXw are cute.

Teddy Blanchard Wrote:
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> I really didn't do any research on the guy until
> this week. Apparently he's super-uber TBM. To
> those who have read his works, does he often
> impose his devout-LDS faith into his writing?
> Regardless of his Mormon delusions and vocal
> homophobia, I'm excited for the class. He's
> clearly a respected writer.

Yes, he frequently puts his TBM beliefs into his writing.
And he's not nearly as "respected" as you seem to think. His body of work has received very mixed receptions -- some "respected," some heavily criticized.

I suspect the most apt subject for him to cover wouldn't be writing, but self-promotion. He's pretty good at that :)

Scott is the 1st counselor in his bishopric. He's actually a pretty complex guy. In so many ways he's your typically repressed LDS guy. In other ways, he's brilliant. And very, very, very crazy weird too. We talked a lot about female orgasm, masterbation, science, history, tons of other authors and approaches to story-telling.

Scott does struggle some with dialogue. But his is a master at characterization and point of view.

Having said that, he is very mean, prideful, flippant, vindictive, and bi-polar.

I'd recommend dropping his class and reading his book "Characterization and Point of View" IIRC the title. You'll learn more from his book than from listening to him lecture about whatever his wandering mind decides is important that day.

A lot of people here hate OSC and for some reason think his writing is awful. It isn't. He is a very good writer.

Like many great scifi writers, he likes to push some weird boundaries when he writes. Considering that he is TBM, some of those boundaries are odd. Many of his earlier, non-standard work has a lot of weird sexual taboo exploration in scifi contexts, for example.

Unfortunately many of his later novels preach. A lot. The character Ender was ruined for me when he used him to preach about how marriage between a man and a woman was the only thing that could make a society strong. I had to stop reading him a few years ago because I couldn't stand it.

That being said, I've known one person who took his class and I knew another person who was an aspiring writer and a missionary in the area that OSC lives. This was probably seven or eight years ago and both of them were Mormon (still are as far as I know). They both thought he was a dick who was mean and condescending for no reason. Having read him a lot, that characterization makes sense. Though, as Doug the Apostate pointed out above, he does seem like a really complex personality.

John Varley is more enjoyable than him and more imaginative but I just read the Gaea series. I'm trying to talk myself out of directly buying more books from him but at least he can review a movie without talking about how evil Obama is and how bad liberals are.

Also he had two strong lesbianic characters who I am sure were of colour and he didn't blow his trumpet about how awesome he was to have such characters. He just put them in his story, and they were cool brave people. He's just so awesome. I got to buy several more books by him. And he's not afraid to have things like multi genitaled centaur creatures.

Ooo and Storm Constantine. Her series Wraeththu is fantastic. Full of great character development. And characters that are mostly mystical hermaphrodites.

Those suggestions sound interesting. I'll take a look. I've been meaning to get into some new authors. :)

Oh yeah, you know who else is awesome? OCTAVIA BUTLER! Ooo her Xenogenesis series is so good. Especially Imago. It's my favourite and I love the word Imago. She deals with a lot of racial issues like in Kindred. I wish she was still alive though. She really was talented and I would not mind being slightly like her as a writer along with Neil Gaiman, Laini Taylor who wrote Daughter of Smoke and Bone and that series is super enjoyable.

Also the Jasper Dent series by Barry Lyga is NOT scifi but it's still so good.

anybody who believes wood floats must be a hell of a sci-fi writer.

snb Wrote:
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> A lot of people here hate OSC and for some reason
> think his writing is awful. It isn't. He is a very
> good writer.

You do realize that who a person considers a "very good writer" or an awful writer is entirely subjective, and not an objective fact, right?

Just checking.

True. But, dang does he frustrate me. Also he switches from third person to first person in a paragraph and it's very annoying!

That isn't true at all. Where did you get the idea that someone can't objectively determine whether an author is a good writer or not?

Was anyone else surprised by the amount of gratuitous adolescent-boy nudity in Ender's Game the first time they read it? After finishing it, I loaned it to a friend who half-jokingly described some of the scenes as soft-core porn.

The guy has issues.

If you think that's bad, look at Songmaster. I'm sorry, but normal people just don't think of little boys that way! UGH! When I read it again, it was so revolting.

I've heard him speak at a sci-fi writing conference, and I know people who've met him. My impressions are that he is: convinced of his own genius, relentlessly self-promoting, bigoted, super-TBM, and highly boring. He also may have a persecution complex about how his former teachers just didn't understand his genius (nor do filmmakers, apparently).

I've read several of his books. He may be commercially successful, but I don't consider him an especially good writer. I'll pick Robert Jordan any day.

I was surprised to learn that he was active. His philosophy seemed way too open minded and accepting for a mormon.

Then I read some short stories. There was this one where a planet exists on which they watch for a particular compulsive trait - tracing the lines on hardwood floors. Anyone who exhibits that behavior is automatically assumed to be a prophet and is revered.

An outsider comes along and tests the water on the planet and finds that it causes this trait in certain susceptible individuals. They treat the planet's water and suddenly no one is more special than anyone else. Except this one old woman who insists on demonstrating the behavior even though she has lost the compunction to do so.

It always seemed to me like an analogy of opening one's eyes to the truth of mormonism and being cured of thinking your people are the chosen ones with that that entails. The one who refused to be well was treated kindly, but considered an odd duck.

Anyway, I found his work reinforcing my decision to leave.

"tracing the lines on hardwood floors."

This was one of my favorite stories from him. I always felt that he used this kind of negative view of OCD behavior to criticize religious fanaticism. When I was Mormon and was reading him I took this as a pretty bold commentary on people who were too into Mormonism, especially when they were being pious in front of other people.

At that point I only kind of understood it. When I left Mormonism I was able to view it in a different light.